


The Skeleton in the Closet Job

by poetikat



Category: Leverage
Genre: Drama, Gen, Suspense, Work In Progress, not quite kid fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-12-21
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 16:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/297689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poetikat/pseuds/poetikat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No matter how deeply the past gets buried, it never stays there.  The job that's haunted Eliot Spencer for the last eight years has finally caught up with him -- and it's not just his life that's in danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> I had a plot bunny bite me hard a few days ago when I was re-watching "The Big Bang Job" and wondered, given Eliot's history and the things that the show has heavily implied he's done, what it would be like for him to have a kid while still being a part of the Leverage team, and what that might mean for him if old enemies decided to come after him for revenge.

Some things about schools would never change. There were the same plastic chairs, the same particle board and laminate tables, the same fluorescent tube ceiling lights that buzzed and hummed like they were about to up and die any day now. And if there was one thing that would last forever – or at least as long as schools were still around – it was the disapproving frown that every teacher and principal could pull out at the drop of a hat.

Eliot reined in his instinctive response to scowl back at the principal and first grade teacher aiming those disapproving frowns at him from across the table. They were a pain in the ass, but he wasn’t about to go and scare the pants off a couple civilians who hadn’t done anything more than drag him away from running errands. “I still don’t see the problem here,” he said instead, idly twirling one of the teacher’s pens between his fingers.

“The problem, Mr. Turner, is that your daughter beat up Tony Weston without provocation,” the principal, Dr. Vaughn, said, with vigorous nodding from Mrs. Hightower backing up his words.

“No she didn’t,” Eliot said. “She knows better than that. Cassie’s a good kid.”

“Cassie,” Dr. Vaughn said, “Threw Tony over her shoulder and kept him pinned on the ground with one of his arms wrenched behind his back until the playground monitors stepped in and made her let him up. How can you possibly claim that she was provoked?”

Eliot had a feeling that a proud “That’s my girl!” was not the right answer. “That Tony kid’s a bully,” he said flatly, letting the pen drop to the table and giving them both hard looks. “He’s been picking on my daughter and her friends for months. I know Cassie’s reported him at least four times since he started. Since he hasn’t stopped, I’m guessing there wasn’t any kind of parent-teacher conference with his folks. From what Cassie told me about today, that kid tripped one of her pals and was shoving him around before she did anything about it. So yeah, she was provoked. All she was doing was protecting her friend.”

“Violence is not the answer, Mr. Turner,” Mrs. Hightower said with a scandalized expression.

“Look,” Eliot said, stabbing the tabletop with his index finger for emphasis. “Either you didn’t talk to his folks about his bullying and let him keep doing what he’s been doing, or you did and it just didn’t stick. No matter which one it is, the fact that my girl took down a second grade boy with five inches and twenty pounds on her means he’s gonna leave her and her friends alone from now on. Way I see it, she did that kid a favor by teaching him that he can’t get by in life just by beating people up to get his way.” The hypocrisy of what he said didn’t escape him, but then again, he was talking about a seven year old boy who really didn’t need to know that yeah, it was entirely possible to make a living killing people. Besides, he’d be as hypocritical as he wanted if it meant that nobody messed with Cassie.

“You would see it that way,” Mrs. Hightower sniffed disdainfully. “What is it you do? Teach boxing?”

“Among other things,” Eliot said. “And what I do doesn’t make a difference about how I feel, ‘cause if I was an accountant instead I’d still be mad as hell that my six year old daughter had to do what her teachers wouldn’t and deal with a bully on her own.”

Dr. Vaughn cleared his throat and squared his shoulders in a clear attempt to regain control of the conversation. “Regardless of your feelings on the matter, your daughter still had an inappropriately violent response to Tony’s actions, and a suitable punishment must be decided upon.”

“Make her write lines,” Eliot suggested. He pushed back his chair and got to his feet, glaring at them as he adjusted his glasses. “‘I will not protect myself from bullies anymore, and I’ll wait for my teachers to get around to doing it for me one of these days.’ How’s that one sound?”

“Mr. Turner!” Mrs. Hightower protested as he walked out the door. “We’re not done yet!”

“Yeah,” he said over his shoulder. “We are.” He slammed the door behind him and looked down at the little girl sitting on the bench outside the classroom, her bright green backpack clutched in her arms and her shiny white sneakers just barely skimming the ground as she kicked her legs back and forth in apparent boredom. “Ready to go, darlin’?”

Cassie jumped off the bench and beamed at him. “I’m super ready to go,” she chirped as Eliot relieved her of her backpack and swung it over his shoulder. “I don’t have _any_ homework left, and I finished my Nancy Drew book, and everyone’s gone, and I’m _so bored_. Can we go do something fun now?”

“After I check your homework,” Eliot told her, taking her hand and walking out to the parking lot with her. “If it’s all done, then we can have some fun.”

“Can we get ice cream?” she asked, looking up at him hopefully with her big blue eyes. He dropped her hand and ruffled her perpetually messy mop of dark brown curls.

“Nope,” he said, chuckling. “First off, it ain’t Friday yet, and ice cream’s for the weekend only. Second, I don’t think I’m supposed to treat you to ice cream after you put another kid in the nurse’s office.”

She tucked herself under his arm and asked in a small voice, “Am I in trouble, Daddy?”

Damn. Cassie only trotted out “Daddy” when she was nervous or trying to get something out of him, the little grifter. Her mom would be proud, if she’d bothered to stick around after giving birth. “Not with me, you’re not,” he said firmly. “You stood up for your friend to someone bigger and older than you, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Your teacher doesn’t agree with me, but I’m proud of you. You did exactly the right thing.”

“So…if you’re proud of me, does that mean we can have ice cream tonight?” she asked.

Eliot laughed and unlocked the car, handing over her backpack as she slid into the passenger seat. “Answer’s still no. But you can come with me to the grocery store to pick out something to have for dinner tonight.”

“Pizza!” Cassie cheered. “Dad-style pizza!”

“We can do pizza,” he agreed. “How do you want it? Margherita? Hawaiian?”

“Hawaiian,” she said. “With lots and lots of pineapple. And with that tasty thing you do with the sauce that makes it kind of spicy. And with more of that soft melty cheese, and no parmesan.”

“Kiddo, you’re lucky your dad likes to cook,” Eliot said. “Because if any other parent fed their kid as much pizza as you like to eat, their kids’d be as wide around as they are tall.”

“I have the best dad in the world,” she said with another bright smile, bouncing in her seat as he started the engine and pulled out of the lot. “My dad’s a superhero and the best cook ever and knows everything and, and, is just so much cooler than everyone else’s dad.”

Eliot wasn’t looking forward to the day she stopped looking at him like he could do no wrong. He only hoped that it would last until she was old enough to understand why her dad wasn’t as great as she thought he was. “If that’s true, then that means I have the best daughter in the world,” he said, taking a hand off the steering wheel to stroke her curls back. “It takes a very special kid to make a dad into the best dad ever, and darlin’, you are very, very special.”

She hummed happily and pushed her head up into his palm, catlike, as he ran his fingers gently through her messy hair. Times like these, little everyday moments like picking Cassie up from school to take her grocery shopping, made him consider leaving his crew behind and going completely legit. But anyone with an axe to grind and a talented hacker to do some very intensive digging could track him down and destroy whatever perfectly legal, boring life he made for himself and his little girl, and it was easier to keep her safe, strangely enough, when he still had a foot in the criminal world and a team to watch his back. At least this way he could see things coming and take whatever steps he had to to protect his family.

He’d been lucky so far. Six years and nobody but his longtime friend Gail Franklin and Cassie’s mom even knew he had a kid. He’d covered their tracks. As far as the world was concerned, Cassie Spencer didn’t exist. There was only Cassie Turner, daughter of Eliot Turner and Genevieve Lachance. And it was going to stay that way.

A loud buzz broke him from his thoughts as his cell phone vibrated in his right jeans pocket. Right pocket meant work. Work meant there was a new job. He sighed and took his hand off his daughter’s head to dig it out. “Yeah,” he snapped into the phone, irritated. “What?”

“Hello to you too,” Hardison said. “I’m fine, thanks for asking. You know, it’s such a comfort that no matter what, you’re always so friendly and cheerful. It sure makes me feel appreciated. Warms my heart, Eliot, it really does.”

“Again, what?” Eliot asked. “Something I can do for you? Or are you just calling to talk about your imaginary computer friends and how you totally kicked this little animated dude’s butt?”

“Okay, they’re not imaginary, alright? Seriously,” Hardison said. “And what do you mean, ‘little’? It’s hard work killing monsters. The calluses on my fingers, man, I swear my fingertips are never gonna be the same.”

“Get to the point,” Eliot growled.

“Nate found us a client,” Hardison said. “Plant dumping toxic waste into the river, got into the water supply, really sick kids, company won’t take responsibility, parents can’t afford a lawyer – you get the picture. I’m gonna bring everyone up to speed as soon as you and Parker get here. How long’s it gonna take you?”

“I’m about forty-five minutes out,” Eliot said, glancing at his daughter’s disappointed expression with a little pang of guilt. “But I have to make a stop on the way, so give me an hour, hour fifteen.”

“Can do, man,” Hardison said. “See you then.”

Eliot shut the cell phone with more force than necessary. Great. This one would probably take him out of the state for a few days, maybe longer. “I’m sorry, kiddo,” he apologized. “I’ll get Aunt Gail to take you to the store, okay? I’ll be back home in time to make pizza with you, I promise.”

“Okay,” Cassie said glumly. “I know you have to go help someone. But I get to make the dough this time.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he said. “You keep this up and I bet you’ll be able to make pizzas without my help real soon.”

“Don’t be silly, Dad,” Cassie said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not Dad-style pizza if you don’t make it.”

“Good point,” he said. “Hey, I bet Aunt Gail has a new Nancy Drew book for you at the shop. You should ask her about it when we get there.”

She did a little dance where she sat, mood instantly boosted by the thought of a new book. “I will!” she said. “Oh, guess what happened in the book?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “How about you tell me while I drive?”

She obliged, filling the air with excited chatter all the way from where they were to the parking space in front of the secondhand and antique bookstore Gail worked at. “And then the police found Nancy’s dad in Gombet’s house,” she said as he turned the engine off and took the keys out of the ignition. “Because Gombet _kidnapped_ him!”

“Sounds like a good story,” Eliot said, reaching across Cassie’s seat to open her door for her. “Come on, kiddo. Sooner I get to the meeting, the sooner I get home for dinner.”

At that, Cassie grabbed her backpack and darted out the door to the sidewalk. “Okay! I’m all ready! See? So you can go and come back really fast!”

“Hang on just a minute,” Eliot said as he locked the door behind him and ushered Cassie through the door of the bookstore. “I’m not going anywhere until we check in with Aunt Gail.”

“Welcome to Bookhaven,” the guy at the counter said in an accent that Eliot pegged as coming from somewhere in Southern England. When he recognized Eliot and his daughter he added a smile and a wave to his greeting. “Rather, welcome back, Cassie. Mr. Turner.”

“Just Eliot,” Eliot said. He grinned and shook the guy’s hand. “Peter, right?”

“I hadn’t expected you to remember,” Peter said. “No one beside the other employees has managed to memorize my name in just a few short weeks.”

“El’s good with names,” Gail said, coming up to the front of the store with a dirty rag in one hand and a bottle of book glue in the other. In an ink-splattered old button down and horn-rimmed glasses, her blonde hair piled into a sloppy ponytail, she looked nothing like she had the day she’d decided to have some fun and play “Nurse Gail” when she came to pick him up, bruises, cracked ribs, and all, at the bar. “Plus he’s always here. Which brings me to my question: what are you doing here? I thought you had the day to yourself.”

“New client,” Eliot explained. “I’m just going to go find out what they need from me. I’ll be back in time to make dinner, but I need you to take Cassie to the grocery store for pizza ingredients.”

“We’re doing Hawaiian tonight,” Cassie informed Gail and Peter. “And I get to make the dough.”

“Well, if you’re cooking tonight, then I guess I can wrap up here and head out with Cassie,” Gail said. “But you’re going to owe me.”

“I’m not going to Ireland just to pick up a book for you,” Eliot said. Plus there was no way he’d make it through Customs with the Book of Kells in his suitcase on his way back to Boston. “Aim lower.”

“There’s a nice one at Yale I’ve got my eye on,” she suggested. “Lots of pretty pictures in that one too.”

“That’s overkill for leaving work early,” he said. Greedy forger. God only knew what she wanted with the Voynich Manuscript. “How about I make my special potatoes for dinner the next night I’m free to cook?”

“Deal,” Gail said. “Pete, are you cool with closing for me?”

“Of course,” he said with an easy smile. “Family’s the most important thing in the world, after all.”

“Thanks,” Eliot said. “Both of you. Thanks. And you,” he said, turning to look down at Cassie, “Got your phone?”

“Yep,” she said. “Got my phone, and my keys, and my whistle. And I have Aunt Gail too, Dad. Don’t worry.”

“I’m your dad,” Eliot said. “It’s my job to worry about you. Now come here and gimme a kiss before I head out.”

Cassie jumped into his outstretched arms and gave his cheek a loud smacking kiss. “I love you, Dad.”

“I love you too, darlin’,” Eliot said, returning the kiss and hugging her close to his chest before reluctantly setting her down on her feet. “Be good for Aunt Gail. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Gail said, propelling him out the door with a hand on his back. “Go do your thing. You can’t hold up the meeting hanging around here with us.”

He laughed and sauntered out the door, tossing a wave over his shoulder as he headed back to the car. She had a point, but still, as talented as she was, she’d never been able to get a handle on either patience or tact. Since neither one was Eliot’s strong suit, it’d be a miracle if they managed to teach those skills to Cassie.

He peeled away from the curb and shot down the street, one eye on the traffic and the other on the clock in the dashboard. This would make the third time in a row that he’d been late to a team meeting, and he didn’t want to keep holding everyone up. If it got on his nerves, then it sure as hell got on everyone else’s.

The second he walked through Nate’s door, Hardison tossed the lid to one of his empty bottles of orange soda at him and demanded, “What took you, man?”

“I was on the other side of town,” Eliot said, catching the lid and sending it rocketing back to bean Hardison on his forehead. “Heading out to pick up some groceries. You just caught me at a bad time.” Truth, truth, and truth. Sophie wasn’t going to see past that.

Everyone knew that you can’t con a con artist. That’s how Eliot got away with it. He hardly ever lied. And they hadn’t caught on. Not yet, at least.

“You’re making dinner?” Parker asked, perking up. “Are you making it for us?”

“Sorry, Parker,” Eliot said, and aimed a smug, self-satisfied smile at everyone in the room. “I have a date with two gorgeous ladies tonight, and I promised I’d do the cooking.”

“Enough already,” Nate interrupted, rolling his eyes. “Hardison, run it.”

Eliot joined Parker on the couch, most of his attention firmly on Hardison’s rundown of the client and the company they’d agreed to take down. But something from earlier was itching at the back of his mind, and it wouldn’t leave him alone.


	2. Chapter One

“Security’s tight, but it’s nowhere near as bad as we’ve dealt with before,” Eliot said as he leaned over Hardison’s shoulder to get a better look at the video feed on his laptop. “Four guards outside, eight inside, a pair on each floor – no guns, though, so that’s a plus. Hell, Parker could probably get in and out with the evidence without me lifting a finger.”

The whole crew was there, crowded around the little table in Hardison’s hotel room in yet another middle-of-nowhere town in Pennsylvania on yet another job. They were only a day or two away from wrapping up at the chemical plant; Hardison was wired into the security system, Nate and Sophie were playing the CEO like a fiddle, and Parker had the blueprints to the building memorized backwards and forwards. This one looked like it was actually going to go smoothly for once. In, out, files, confession. If only they were all this easy.

“Don’t worry, Eliot,” Sophie said with a pat to his arm. “I’m sure you’ll be able to knock heads together on this one.”

“Good to know,” Eliot said. Patronizing teasing aside, he did enjoy a good fight. This job didn’t have any good fights lined up for him, but coming home without any bruises made for a happy daughter, and a happy daughter meant he could escape getting covered in racecar Band-Aids from her attempts at first aid.

“So we’re agreed,” Nate said. “We go in tomorrow for the files. Parker?”

“The janitor’s keycard is an all access pass,” Parker said, fiddling with the card she’d swiped earlier in the evening. “And Hardison can loop the camera footage in the stairwell. It’s a cakewalk. Only with secret computer files instead of dessert. What is a cakewalk, anyway?”

“No idea,” Eliot said.

“Don’t ask me,” Sophie said. “I’m British. I don’t know anything about the peculiar customs of Americans.”

“Let’s just assume that it has something to do with walking and cakes and move on,” Nate said. “Hardison, where are we on the digital side of security?”

“We’re all set,” Hardison said. “I have all the video surveillance under my control, there aren’t any laser tripwires or heat sensors or anything else along those lines. If you were going into the research lab, things would get messy, but the offices are just keycard access. Nothing to worry about.”

“Good,” Nate said. “Sophie and I will put the screws to Wilder tomorrow, and Eliot, you keep the guards off Parker’s back.”

“Can do,” Eliot said. “Are we good to go? ‘Cause there’s a hockey game and a cold beer with my name on it waiting back in my room.”

“Yes, fine, we’re good to go,” Nate said. “Enjoy your blood sport.”

“Hockey isn’t a – you know what, never mind,” Eliot said. “I’ll do that.” He made for the door, grumbling under his breath.

Then his heart missed a beat as the phone in his left pocket buzzed.

Only two people had the number to that cell, and they never, _ever_ called while he was on a job. There was only one reason that phone would be buzzing: something back home had gone horribly, horribly wrong. He flipped it open and rushed out the door, shutting it behind him for privacy. “Cassie?”

On the other end of the phone, Cassie let out a shuddery breath and whispered, “D-Daddy? Th-there are s-scary m-men in the apartment.”

The blood froze in Eliot’s veins at his daughter’s words. “Are you safe?” he demanded. “Are you in the panic room?”

“Y-yeah,” she whispered. “So’s Aunt Gail. B-but she’s hurt, and she’s bleeding all over, and the men are right outside, and I don’t know what to do!”

Eliot took a deep breath and tried to push away the unwanted horrifying images playing out in his imagination. “Give the phone to Aunt Gail for a second, okay kiddo?”

“Promise you’ll still be there after?” she asked plaintively.

“I promise,” Eliot said. “I just need to talk to Aunt Gail for a little bit, and then I’m all yours again.”

“Okay,” she whispered, and after a couple seconds of quiet rustling noises, a different voice met his ear.

“El,” Gail said, her voice tight and strained. “There are four of them. They all have guns. One of them shot me in the arm before I made it into the panic room. I think the bullet hit bone.”

“Do you both have your phones on you?” he asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t make it inside fast enough. I stopped to grab my cell first.”

“You’re a reckless idiot, but thank God you are,” Eliot said. “Call Detective Bonanno from the Massachusetts State Police. I stuck his number and the extension in your contacts. He’s the only officer I trust.”

“Will do,” she said. “And El, get your as – _butt_ back here.”

“On my way,” he said. “Give the phone back to Cassie and call Bonanno, and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

A heartbeat later his daughter’s voice came back on the line. “Daddy?”

“I’m still here,” he said. “Now, I have to let my crew know I’m leaving, and then I’m coming home. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna get off the phone. I’m right here.”

“Okay,” she said again. “Just don’t hang up.”

“I won’t,” he said, and opened the door to find the rest of the team staring at him with varying degrees of worry.

“Is everything alright, Eliot?” Sophie asked tentatively.

He ignored her question and picked up his jacket, shrugging it on and tucking his cell between his cheek and his shoulder. “I’ve gotta go back to Boston. Now.”

“You can’t bail on the job,” Hardison said. “We need you for this.”

“Have I ever left in the middle of a job before?” Eliot snapped. “No. I don’t leave jobs undone. So if I say I have to leave, then you should be able to figure out that I have a damn good reason for it.” He stopped and said into the phone, “Don’t ever repeat that.”

“I won’t,” Cassie said obediently.

Nate gave him a piercing look, and when Eliot didn’t back down he nodded sharply. “We’ll manage without you,” he said. “Parker, take Eliot to the airport. Eliot, let Parker drive. We’re going to need that car tomorrow, and she’ll get you there faster than you can drive yourself.”

“Fine, whatever. Let’s go.” He snatched the keys off the table and tossed them to Parker.

“Call us when you get there, man,” Hardison said. “If you need anything, just say the word.”

Eliot spared a breath to mutter his thanks, and then he was out the door and speed-walking to the parking lot, Parker keeping pace at his side.

“What happened?” Parker asked as soon as they got in the rental car and shot out of the parking lot and down the street.

“Four armed men broke into my place and attacked the people staying there,” Eliot said tersely. A terrifying thought struck him and he spoke into the phone. “Cassie, which apartment are you in?”

“Aunt Gail’s,” Cassie said in a tiny voice.

He held the phone away from his mouth and swore furiously in Russian, remembering just in time to switch to a language she didn’t understand. Gail’s apartment was on the floor below his, the lease signed in her name with no mention of Eliot Spencer anywhere near the paperwork. Her criminal career was a long and interesting one, and she was a gifted forger, but she hadn’t done anything worth sending hired killers after her. If those men had gone to her place because of him – if they knew, if someone had found out – he didn’t know what he’d do. He felt the weight of each of his thirty-seven years double, and he struggled to breathe in the face of it.

His daughter was in danger because he put her in danger.

Parker stepped on the gas pedal harder. “Who would do something like that?”

“Better question is who wouldn’t,” Eliot said. He chose his next words carefully, mindful of the fact that there was a six year old listening in on his half of the conversation. “There are a whole lot of people who’d like to pay me back for things I did. Joining up with Nate and all of you added more names to that list, but even if I’d stayed out of it there’d still be a line of people a mile long looking to settle old scores.”

“Makes sense,” she said. “It really sucks, too.” She blew past a red light and added, “Who’s Cassie? Is she somebody important?”

“Cassie’s the person who makes life worth living,” Eliot told her. “She’s the light of my life and I love her with all my heart.”

“I love you too, Daddy,” Cassie said.

“So she’s your girlfriend?” Parker asked. “Fiancée? Sister? Wife? Please tell me you aren’t married and haven’t told us.”

“I’m not married,” he said, dodging the question. “And take the comm out. You’re not getting anything out of me with Sophie feeding you lines.”

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly, holding the wheel with one hand and fishing the little earpiece out of her ear with the other. “Here.”

She dropped it in the palm of his hand, and he tucked it into his jacket pocket where it wouldn’t pick up the sound of their voices. “Alright then. No, she’s not my girlfriend. Or my fiancée. Or my sister. She’s something else. And it’s nobody’s business but ours.”

“Why won’t you tell me? I won’t tell anyone,” Parker said.

“We all have our secrets, Parker. I don’t pester you about yours. Do me a favor and drop it. This ain’t the time to pry.” But there really wasn’t any point to keeping quiet, not anymore. He could feel his privacy slipping through his fingers already. It was only a matter of hours, a day on the outside, before they all knew.

“I’m dropping it,” she said. “Can I have my comm back now?”

“No,” he said shortly.

“Daddy?” Cassie said hesitantly. “You’re being kind of scary. Can you stop being mad at Miss Parker and be mad at the bad guys instead?”

“I’m not mad at Parker, darlin’,” Eliot said. “I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”

“And you’re mad at the bad guys,” she said.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m really mad. They’re lucky my detective friend is getting there first.”

He sat through several minutes of silence, nothing but his daughter’s soft breath and the low rumble of the car engine filling his ears, and he closed his eyes, focusing all of his attention on the sound of Cassie breathing. If she was breathing, she was okay. If she was breathing, he hadn’t completely failed to keep her safe.

Cassie broke the silence with another quiet call of his name. “Daddy?”

“I’m still here,” he said, opening his eyes. “I’m right here.”

“I know,” she said. “Daddy, I’m scared. I wish you were really here.”

“I’m on my way,” he said. “Just a few more hours and I’ll be there right by your side. And Detective Bonanno will be there soon. You’re going to be okay. You hear me, kiddo? You’re going to be okay.”

Parker let out a gasp, unable to stifle it in time. Eliot looked over at her to see her looking back at him with wide eyes, and his heart plummeted into his stomach. “Is Cassie your –”

“Eyes on the road, Parker,” Eliot said. “Eyes on the road.”

She turned her head to the front again, her eyes on the road. Much to Eliot’s annoyance, her attention was still focused on him. “How old is she? What does she look like? Who’s her mom? Does she know how to pick locks? Why didn’t you tell us about her?”

“Parker,” Eliot said with forced calm. “This is a bad time to be asking me questions. Save ‘em for later.”

“You _will_ answer them later, right?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I will. But not now.”

Cassie spoke up again. “Will you sing something for me?”

“Sure thing,” Eliot told her gently. “What do you want me to sing?”

“The thief song,” she said immediately. “I want to hear the thief song.”

“One thief song, coming right up,” he said, and without an ounce of embarrassment to spare for his audience in the car started to sing the lullaby he used to put her to sleep with. “Hush, little Cassie, don’t say a word, Daddy’s gonna steal you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird won’t sing, Daddy’s gonna steal you a diamond ring. And if that diamond ring turns brass, Daddy’s gonna steal you a looking glass. And if that looking glass gets broke, Daddy’s gonna steal you a billy goat. And if that billy goat won’t pull, Daddy’s gonna steal you a cart and bull. And if that cart and bull turn over, Daddy’s gonna steal you a dog named Rover. And if that dog named Rover won’t bark, Daddy’s gonna steal you a horse and cart. And if that horse and cart falls down, well you’ll still be the sweetest little Cassie in town.”

“Thanks, Daddy,” Cassie said softly.

“Any time, darlin’,” Eliot said. “How are you doing?”

“I feel a little better,” Cassie said. “You make things less scary.”

“You’re being very brave,” he praised her. “You’re doing a great job.”

“I am?”

“Yeah, kiddo, you are. And I’m gonna tell you that in person real soon.”

“I don’t feel brave,” she said.

“Here,” Eliot said. “Try this for me. Close your eyes, alright? I want you to imagine a staircase in your head with ten steps. Do you see it?”

“I see it,” she said. “Now what?”

“Now I want you to walk down the stairs. Every step down is taking you farther away from where you are right now, and taking you closer to a place you feel happy and safe in. Maybe it’s the park, or the bookstore, or a sunny beach somewhere.”

“It’s the beach in Costa Rica,” she said peacefully after a moment’s silence.

“Okay, good,” he said. “That’s good. Now take a look around and make yourself familiar with the place. Touch the sand, splash the water around, listen to the waves. Remember, you’re on the beach now. Everything’s just fine. Nothing can hurt you here. I want you to stay here until it’s safe to go back.”

“Okay, Daddy,” she said in the same peaceful voice. “I’ll stay here.”

“Good girl.” He shot a quick look at Parker and stopped short, caught off balance at the sight of her suspiciously shiny eyes and the little smile on her face. “What is it?”

“Did you just hypnotize your daughter?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Just a little trick I picked up in Brussels. And if it keeps her calm, I’m all for it.”

“I know you don’t want me to ask any questions,” she said, her eyes growing wetter and shinier with every word. “But you’re a great dad. I wish I’d had a dad like you.”

“No,” Eliot said firmly. “You don’t. Not really. Not with how often I’m away from home roughing people up and getting the crap kicked out of me by the few guys we come across who’re as good as me. Definitely not with my history. But thanks, Parker. I do my best.”

She shook her head hard. “You’re wrong.”

“Just leave it alone and get me to the airport,” he said. She looked like she wanted to keep arguing, but for once she left off poking at him and just shot up the onramp to the highway without another word. Eliot closed his eyes again and went back to listening to his daughter breathe.

Soft breath in, soft breath out. Soft breath in, soft breath out. Eliot found himself almost unconsciously matching his breathing patterns to Cassie’s. She was alive, she was breathing, she was unhurt. She was in the panic room he’d paid a small fortune to have added into the apartment. The police were on their way. There was nothing he could do for her but stay on the phone and wait. If he was a religious man he’d pray, but after all the things he’d seen and done he wasn’t sure what he believed anymore. His folks would be disappointed if they knew he hadn’t attended a service in almost fifteen years. They’d be worse than disappointed if they knew why.

He didn’t understand it. She’d been hidden perfectly. They’d even switched out her real birth certificate at the hospital for a forgery the day Eliot had taken her home. If anyone from his days before joining the team was gunning for him, they should’ve come after him and him alone. There was a long, long list of people who’d be glad to see him dead and buried. The only continent on the planet that didn’t have people after his blood was Antarctica. Germany, Russia, Serbia, Italy, India, Morocco, Bangladesh, Iraq, South Africa, Colombia, Myanmar, North Korea, Mexico, Australia – the number of people who could be behind this was overwhelming, and narrowing that list down was going to be difficult.

One of the worst aspects of this whole ugly situation was that deep down, buried beneath layers of avoidance and stubborn silence, he’d always known that his past would catch up with him eventually. He’d done too much to escape that. He’d just thought he’d have more time. He’d _hoped_ he’d have more time. He’d hoped it wouldn’t touch his daughter.

Hope didn’t do anyone much good in the long run. The only things that could be counted on were hard work and determination.

Unfortunately for the men threatening Cassie, Eliot was very determined to take them apart with his bare hands and mail what was left to whoever was behind this, and then go do the same to them, too. He might be one of the good guys these days, but he’d kill them all without a shred of remorse and then go home to make dinner for his daughter after washing off the blood. No one threatened her and got away with it.

A sudden burst of muffled noise – shouting, heavy feet running, the bang of gunfire – made Eliot jolt upright, his eyes flying open. The police had arrived. It was about damn time.

The commotion outside the panic room roused Cassie from her light trance. “Who’s out there? Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Eliot said. “That’d be the police, kiddo. Everything’s gonna be alright.”

“It’s so loud,” she said, her voice going shrill from fear.

“Don’t pay attention to that,” he told her. “Pay attention to me. Now come on, kiddo. Tell me what you want to do tomorrow. What do you want to do when I get home?”

“Build a pillow fort,” she said. “And make cookies. And read with you. And not go to school.”

“We can do all that,” Eliot said. “What kind of cookies do you want to make?”

“Peanut butter,” Cassie said. “Peanut butter’s the best.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it is. Good choice. Are we gonna put chocolate chips in them too?”

“Only if we use the chunky peanut butter,” she said. “I don’t like it with the smooth stuff.”

“You’re a girl after my own heart,” he said. “We’ll make ‘em just like that. Good. Tell me about the fort. How big are we gonna build it?”

“It’s going to be _huge_. It’s going to have all the chairs and all the cushions and lots of blankets, and a secret tunnel out the back.”

“A secret tunnel? Wow,” Eliot said. “Sounds pretty fancy. I don’t suppose I’m the one who’s building the tunnel, am I?”

“I’m doing it,” Cassie said. “But you can help if you want.”

“I definitely want to,” Eliot said. “How else am I gonna make sure we both fit inside?”

“Oh, yeah. You should probably make it,” she said. “Hey! Someone’s knocking!”

Eliot heard Gail’s voice in the background asking a question, and it must have been the right answer, because the next thing he heard was a beep and the sound of the door opening. “Cassie, give the phone to the police officer. I need to talk to him.”

“Okay,” she said, and then more indistinctly, “My dad wants to talk to you.”

“Is this Eliot Spencer?” Bonanno asked as soon as the phone was passed to him.

Eliot feigned ignorance. “Who? No, this is Eliot Turner. Is everyone okay?”

“They’re safe,” Bonanno said. “You need a better alias, Spencer. A phone call to my personal line at the station that isn’t from family or another cop, and it’s to ask for my help specifically? The odds are better than good that it’s from someone in Nate Ford’s team. The rest is just process of elimination. Don’t worry about it. I’m kind of getting used to it.”

“That’s it?” Eliot asked. “No questions?”

“Not right now,” Bonanno said. “You’re on your way back to Boston, right?”

“In the car as we speak,” Eliot said. “I’m about half an hour out from Pittsburgh, and I’m jumping on the first direct flight to Boston. I’ll get in in three, maybe four hours tops.”

“I don’t want to know how you’re getting here that fast,” Bonanno said. “I really don’t. Just call when you land and I’ll have a uniform come and pick you up to take you to the station to be with your daughter. Paramedics are on their way now to take your friend to the hospital, and I’m going to drive your kid back to the station personally. Sound good?”

“I – yeah,” Eliot said, almost dizzy with relief. “Thank you, sir. I honestly can’t thank you enough.”

“I’m just doing my job,” Bonanno said. “Anything else I can do?”

“Just tell Cassie I’m on my way, and that I love her. I’m trusting you with my daughter’s life, Detective. Keep her safe.”

“I will,” Bonanno said solemnly. “See you soon, Spencer.”

Eliot ended the call and slumped back in his seat, covering his face with a trembling hand. “Bonanno has her now,” he told Parker. “She’s fine. She’s been scared out of her wits and God only knows how long she’s gonna have nightmares about this, but she’s fine.”

Parker let out a gusty sigh of relief and punched his arm playfully. “Of course she is. She’s your kid, after all. Give her a couple years and she’ll be doing your job for you.”

“She’s six, Parker,” Eliot said. “Six.”

“I blew up a house when I was six,” Parker said. “Start her off small.”

“What? No!” Eliot spluttered. “There’s something seriously wrong with you.”

“Fine, no explosives,” Parker said. “Be boring.”

“I’m gonna be very boring where explosives are concerned,” Eliot said. “I swear to God, Parker, if you ever try to introduce my kid to the joys of blowing shit up, they’ll never find your body.”

“Really, really boring,” Parker said sadly. “Not even a little C-4? It’s really stable.”

Eliot groaned. “Just drive.”

* * *

It was half past one in the morning when Eliot finally made it to the station, where he was greeted at the door by an exhausted Bonanno. “I don’t work nights,” Bonanno said by way of greeting, “But I thought you’d want me to be here instead of a stranger.”

“You got that right,” Eliot said. “Thanks again, Detective. Dealing with us has to be a pain in the ass.”

Bonanno shrugged expressively and took a sip from a cracked ceramic coffee mug. “It’s something I’ve gotten used to by now. Just don’t ever give me details. Plausible deniability’s what makes this arrangement work.”

“Trust me, you’ll never hear the half of it,” Eliot said. “Now where’s my daughter?”

“She’s in my office trying not to fall asleep,” Bonanno said. “It’s just this way. She’s dying to see you.” At Eliot’s involuntary flinch, he said, “Sorry. Wrong choice of word?”

“Oh yeah,” Eliot said forcefully.

“Sorry,” Bonanno said again. “Follow me, Spencer. I’ll take you to her.”

Walking through a police station without it being part of a con at the side of a cop who knew he was a career criminal made his skin crawl, but he pushed the discomfiting feeling aside. Cassie came first in all things, and Bonanno was the last cop on Earth who would arrest him. He wasn’t going to be reunited with his daughter only to be tossed behind bars.

Bonanno opened the door to a decent sized office, murmuring to Eliot, “Perks of being captain. I get four walls and privacy. Nothing better in a busy station.” The light from outside the office shone through the door, and when it lit upon Bonanno’s desk Eliot saw Cassie curled up awkwardly in his chair, her head drooped forward with her chin touching her chest. Eliot went weak at the knees at the sight, and Bonanno grabbed his arm to hold him up. “She’s a brave little girl, Spencer. I haven’t seen a single tear from her since we took her from your apartment.”

“In that case, brace yourself for waterworks,” Eliot said. He walked across the carpeted floor and knelt beside the chair, setting a gentle hand on Cassie’s knee. “Cassie. Wake up, darlin’. I’m back.”

She stirred and blinked sleepily at him. “Daddy?” Her eyes widened and she scrambled out of the chair, flinging herself at him and wrapping her little arms around his neck. “Daddy! You’re here!”

“Of course I am,” he said, squeezing her tight and burying his face in her wild mess of hair. “I always keep my promises, don’t I?”

Her back jerked beneath his hands as she gave a hiccupping sob, and he felt her nod against his shoulder as she cried, the stress and misery of the past several hours finally coming to the surface. He scooped her up and stood, rocking slightly back and forth. “I don’t think we should go anywhere tonight,” he told Bonanno. “Not at this hour. Got anywhere we can sleep that isn’t a holding cell?”

Bonanno chuckled. “There are beds in a room off the locker room for officers who have to stay late. Come with me.”

Eliot followed Bonanno back across the station and into a small room with two bunk beds. “You’ll get me up to speed tomorrow,” he stated, not even making an attempt to phrase it as a question or a request.

Bonanno seemed to understand. “I’ll be back in bright and early tomorrow to catch you up,” he said. “Get some sleep, Spencer. You’re going to need it.”

His words sounded ominous, but Eliot was too busy reveling in having his daughter back in his arms to care, at least for the moment. “Night, Detective. See you tomorrow.”

He tried to detach Cassie’s hold around his neck to put her in one of the beds, but she shook her head violently and held on even tighter. He gave it up as a lost cause and lay down on the nearest bed flat on his back, his daughter clinging to his front like a limpet. He had only one thought on his mind before falling asleep as he rubbed soothing circles on her back: whoever was responsible for this was going to pay in the most violent and bloody manner imaginable.


	3. Chapter Two

The weight on Eliot’s chest wriggled and slid off, and he snapped from sleep to consciousness instantly, opening his eyes to the sight of the bunk bed above his head. His vision was oddly off, and he reached up to touch his face. His fingers encountered metal and glass. He’d fallen asleep with his glasses on. He pushed them back into place and sat up, smiling at Cassie. “Morning, kiddo. Did you sleep alright?”

Cassie looked across at him from her perch on the other bottom bunk with a radiant smile that lit up the room. “You were here,” she said. “You scared my nightmares away. Bad guys are always scared of you.”

“For good reason,” Eliot agreed, inwardly marveling at the resilience of children. “Let’s go see what we can rustle up for breakfast. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty hungry.”

“Me too,” she said, hopping up and grabbing his hand to pull him from the bed. “Come on!”

Eliot let her drag him from the bed, giving her just enough help to manage the feat without feeling like he was doing all the work for her. “Whoa. You’re getting pretty strong, aren’t you?”

“Well, duh,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “ _You’re_ my dad.”

He rapped his knuckles gently on the crown of her head. “True. But you didn’t learn that attitude from me or Aunt Gail. Lose the cheek, darlin’. It’s not cute.”

“Okay,” she said, ducking her head contritely. She followed him out of the room and into the police station proper, the hem of his jacket clutched in her hand. “Hi!” she said brightly to the first officer that crossed their path.

“Hi yourself,” the officer said warmly, smiling down at his daughter. Her black hair was pulled back in a sensible, no-nonsense braid, but she was young enough that she hadn’t lost the playful spark in her eyes from too many years on the force. “And who might you be?”

“I’m Cassandra Irene Turner and I’m six years old,” Cassie said proudly, throwing back her shoulders and rising up on her toes to show off every inch of her diminutive height. “And this is my dad. But you can call me Cassie.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Cassie,” the officer said. “I’m Officer Vargas. And it’s a pleasure to meet you too, Cassie’s dad.”

“Call me Eliot, please,” he said, automatically turning on the charm as he shook her hand. “It sure is nice to see a friendly face first thing in the morning.”

“I’m impressed, Mr. Cassie’s dad,” Officer Vargas said. “It’s a rare man who can flirt with a strange cop five minutes after waking up in a police station. Oh, and call me Elena.”

“It helps that we spent the night in there and not in holding. That’s the sort of thing that boosts a man’s confidence,” Eliot said with a wink. “Know where we can find breakfast in this place?”

“There’s a vending machine down the hall,” Elena said, pointing. “And Stan brought in donuts this morning.”

Eliot grimaced. Chips and candy or sugary pastries. Either one was a nutritional nightmare, and both were worlds away from what he usually made for breakfast for Cassie. “I can’t believe I’m giving my kid junk food for breakfast,” he said. “Alright. Lead the way to the donuts.”

“Stan” turned out to be a burly, craggy-faced sergeant named Stanley Rooney whose gruff exterior melted in the face of Cassie’s rumpled appearance and bright smile. He flipped the lid open on the donut box and pushed it across his desk to her. “Take whichever one you want, sweetheart,” he said.

Eliot caught her around the middle before she could get her hands on any of them. “Not so fast, kiddo.” He picked her up with one arm and peered into the box, stifling a smile at her protests as she wiggled in an attempt to free herself. Why couldn’t Rooney have brought in whole wheat bagels instead? He didn’t object to unhealthy food across the board – he was partial to the occasional Chinese takeout and pizza at the office – but there was a time and a place, and breakfast on a Tuesday morning wasn’t it. He settled on two plain cake donuts and handed one to Cassie as he put her back down. Donuts for breakfast. Jesus Christ. It was almost enough to make him consider breaking his promise to make cookies with Cassie today. Almost. But he’d never broken a promise to her before, and he wasn’t about to start over something like donuts.

“She yours?” Rooney asked Eliot.

Eliot swallowed a mouthful of donut. “Yes she is,” he said. “How I got lucky enough to end up with a sweet kid like her is beyond me, but she’s definitely my daughter.”

“She has your eyes,” Elena commented. “But she must take after her mother in looks.”

“Nah,” Eliot said. “She looks just like my mom. That smile’s all her mother’s though.”

“And her mom is…” Elena said leadingly.

“Out of the picture since I took Cassie home from the hospital,” Eliot said. He changed the subject quickly, wary of sharing information about his daughter to anyone he didn’t know well enough to trust implicitly. “Is there any coffee around here?”

“This is a police station, son,” Rooney said. “There’s a stereotype about cops and coffee for a reason. We run on that stuff. There’s a big pot on the burner over there.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the entrance.

“I’ll be back in a bit,” he said to Cassie. “Stay with the officers, okay?”

“Okay,” she said without looking up, absorbed in the novelty of having a donut for breakfast. Eliot shook his head and wandered over to the table with the coffee pots.

The door to the station banged open as Eliot was tearing open a packet of sugar to stir into his coffee. Whoever had entered walked up behind him to join him at the table. “Morning, Spencer,” Bonanno said, taking a mug and pouring himself a cup of the jet fuel the cops at the station apparently called coffee.

“Morning, Detective,” Eliot returned. He stirred his coffee vigorously and took a cautious sip, wincing at the scalding temperature.

“You know you’re allowed to call me Pat outside of poker nights, right?” Bonanno said.

“And let everyone know what kind of company you keep when you’re off the clock?” Eliot asked, raising his eyebrows. “I’ll stick with Detective while I’m in here, thanks.”

“Maybe,” Bonanno said. “But around here it would benefit you if you did, being on first name basis with the captain. Put some polish on that disreputable image you have.”

Eliot laughed quietly into his coffee mug. “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Is that it?”

“That’s right,” Bonanno said. The good-humored look slid from his face as he turned away from the table. “Look. I don’t know when the best time to talk about last night is going to be for you, but there are a few things you ought to know straight off.”

“Then the best time is right now,” Eliot said. “Go ahead.”

Bonanno gulped down a large mouthful of coffee before answering. “We have one of the men in custody, and another one in the morgue. The other two are in the wind. I need to see if you can identify either of them. I sent an officer to the hospital with photographs to see if your friend Ms. Franklin can help, too.”

Damn. Between the poor sleep and the overwhelming relief at seeing his daughter, Gail had completely slipped his mind. “How is she?”

“I’m just repeating what I heard from the paramedics, but the doctors almost certainly had to operate on that arm,” Bonanno said. “She’ll likely be setting off metal detectors for the rest of her life with the number of screws they probably put in the bone.”

“She’s gonna hate that,” Eliot said. “Attention from security personnel and law enforcement makes her twitchy.”

“I wonder why,” Bonanno said dryly. “Are you up for ID’ing our perps? The guy we have in custody is sitting in interrogation with one of my best detectives.” Bonanno’s smile was sharp and vicious, a jarringly unfamiliar expression on the face of the laidback detective. “He’s been there all night. If Maxwell’s done his job right, our friendly neighborhood gunman should be nice and softened up by now.”

His ferocity surprised Eliot until he remembered that Bonanno was a father too. “Definitely,” Eliot said grimly. “Show me the son of a bitch who tried to kill my daughter.”

“Normally we’d just leave him to cool his heels in holding,” Bonanno explained as they walked off toward the interrogation rooms, “But we want his employer. More specifically, _I_ want his employer’s head on a pike. Don’t go and do that, by the way. I’d really hate to have to haul you up on a murder charge.”

“Who, me?” Eliot said innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just plain old Eliot Turner, single dad and boxing instructor.”

“I’ve heard that one before,” Bonanno said. “Usually while I’m slapping cuffs on the guy. I mean it, Spencer. Eliot. Don’t. Leave it to me.”

Eliot took a long drink from his mug to avoid answering. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he was just going to sit back and let the cops do their thing. If it had been just an average home invasion, he’d probably – well, maybe – give the justice system its shot without interfering. It hadn’t been just an average anything, though, and while Eliot had a great deal of respect for Bonanno, there was no way that a bunch of cops could handle something like this. They wouldn’t even know where to start, and Eliot wasn’t about to sit down and tell someone with a badge and a gun all that he’d done for the past decade and a half that might’ve brought this down on his head.

“I’ll just take that as a yes,” Bonanno said, ushering him into a small room adjoining an interrogation room. “Here he is. Recognize the guy?”

The man in question was seated facing the window. Eliot didn’t have to give him more than a cursory once-over – thinning brown hair, gray eyes, crooked nose – to say, “I’ve never seen him before in my life.” Then he took a longer look, taking in the level stare, the settled, comfortable posture, and the fingers tapping out an irregular beat on the table, and added, “But he’s definitely a pro. He’s had anti-interrogation training. You’re not going to get anything out of him.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Bonanno said. “What can you tell me about this guy?” He produced a photo of the head and shoulders of a man on a coroner’s table and passed it to Eliot.

“This guy I know,” Eliot said. “I recognize that scar on his neck. His name’s Victor Sorenson. Former marine. Never saw him with a gun, but he was deadly with a knife. I crossed paths with him about seven years ago in Vietnam.”

“A friend of yours?” Bonanno asked as he took the photo back.

“Nowhere close to it. He was working as a personal bodyguard for this antiquities smuggler, getting stuff back and forth over the Chinese border. I was in the neighborhood keeping my head down after wearing out my welcome in Myanmar a couple countries over. It would’ve been a ‘Hey man, how’s that life of crime treating you?’ kind of deal, with both of us going our separate ways, but I got a call while I was in the country, and due to what my new client wanted, my acquaintance with Sorenson got significantly less friendly.”

Bonanno rubbed his forehead wearily. “Less information next time. Myanmar? Really? Wait, no. Don’t tell me.”

“Best not to ask,” Eliot said. “I don’t know about you, but I’m perfectly fine with pretending that I don’t have any past to speak of.”

“That sounds good to me,” Bonanno agreed. “Well, apart from the bit I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear, you’ve basically told me what we already know. We ran both their prints through the system and got names to go with the faces. Laundry list of crimes and outstanding warrants, too. The one in the box is named William Stanhope. He’s ex-SAS. Interpol and the CIA both have him flagged as a contract killer.”

“If Stanhope and Sorenson are any indication, then whoever hired these guys knew what they were doing,” Eliot said. “I’ve gotta be honest, I’m surprised they aren’t all on the loose. We’re talking four extremely skilled killers. Whoever did this wasn’t playing around.”

“Which leads me to my next question,” Bonanno said. “Should I get a safe house set up for you until we have this figured out?”

“Pros like these, a safe house won’t do much good,” Eliot said. “They’re just gonna go to ground and wait until the heat’s off ‘em. Soon as you give the all clear and we head home, that’s when they’ll show up again to finish the job. They’re not gonna want to lose out on a big payday just because they have to wait a few weeks before they can do it. Nah, I’m gonna commandeer Hardison’s place for the time being. He’s got the space for a couple of guests, and I doubt anyone who’s been watching me knows where he lives.”

“You think they know about the bar?” Bonanno asked.

“I’m not gonna risk it,” Eliot said. “There aren’t enough spare rooms, anyway. That reminds me. I should call Hardison and tell him he’s got guests.” He dug his work cell out of his pocket and hit number two on his speed dial.

Hardison picked up on the first ring. “El – Eliot? Eliot! Hey! How’s things? Everything cool?”

“Fine,” Eliot said. “Just thought I oughta let you know I’m moving in with you for a while.”

“Hold up,” Hardison said. “You’re moving in with me?”

“Hey, thanks for the offer,” Eliot said. “I’ll absolutely take you up on that. I just have to get some stuff from my place, and then you have yourself a houseguest.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Hardison said indignantly. Eliot waited him out silently until Hardison said more seriously, “You bringing the little Spencer with you?”

“Yeah, you can meet my better one-fifth when you get back to Boston,” Eliot said. “Thanks for putting me up, man. I can’t take her back there, not with things being how they are.”

“It’s all good,” Hardison said. “Alarm code’s still the same. I know I never got back that extra key to my door from you, so you shouldn’t have any trouble getting in. We’re speeding up the timetable here, and if all goes according to plan, we’ll roll back into town tonight.”

“Don’t go taking stupid risks,” Eliot said. “I’m not around to bail your ass out of trouble if things go sideways this time. Use Parker’s spare Taser or something.”

Hardison laughed. “I always knew you cared about us. Don’t worry. Everything’s under control.”

“See, that? That right there? It’s sentences like that that make me worry,” Eliot said. “It’s like you’re just begging to get steamrollered by Murphy’s Law. But okay. I won’t worry. See you tonight.”

“Everything’s squared away?” Bonanno asked. Eliot held up a finger and dialed in another number.

“Yeah, hi, this is Eliot Turner,” Eliot said as soon as the secretary at his daughter’s school picked up. “I’m calling to let you know that my daughter Cassie’s going to be out of school for the rest of the week, possibly longer. Family emergency. I’ll have someone come and get her homework as soon as I can. Thanks.” He ended the call and looked up at Bonanno. “Now everything’s squared away.”

“Incoming,” Bonanno said, nodding at a spot behind Eliot. Eliot turned to see Cassie poking her head around the door with a reproachful frown, Elena hovering behind her.

“You didn’t come right back,” Cassie said.

Eliot hustled her back out into the hall before she could get a look through the two way mirror, one hand planted firmly on her back and the other wrapped around his mug. “I’m sorry, kiddo. I had to have a grown-up talk with Detective Bonanno first. I’m all yours now.”

“She got nervous when she lost sight of you,” Elena said apologetically.

“I wasn’t nervous!” Cassie insisted. “I just…wanted to find you.” The way she grabbed hold of his hand as soon as he let it drop from her back said otherwise.

“Line of sight, got it,” Eliot said. It was a bit of a relief, if he had to be honest. The more he knew about how she reacted to a traumatic event like last night, the better prepared he was to help her through it. “Have you been behaving for Officer Vargas?”

“She’s been great,” Elena reassured him. “I’m not entirely sure who Aunt Gail is, but I doubt there’s much more left to learn about her. Apparently she’s the most perfect woman in the universe.”

“Playing matchmaker?” Eliot asked Cassie. He hid his laughter when she blushed. “Cassie’s given up on setting me up with women, at least for the moment. Gail’s her new project instead.”

“I see,” Elena said. “Gail is your sister, I take it?”

“Just an old friend,” Eliot said. “I hate to sabotage a good matchmaking scheme, but she doesn’t really go for law enforcement types, kiddo.”

Elena smiled. “That’s a shame. We law enforcement types are very fun.”

“Don’t get any ideas, Officer,” Bonanno said. “Eliot’s not your type.”

“You don’t get to comment on my love life, Det – uh, Pat,” Eliot said. “By the way, I need to get a few things from my place before Cassie and I head over to Hardison’s. Any chance you can take us?”

“I’ll take you,” Elena offered.

Eliot shook his head very slightly at Bonanno and gulped down the rest of his coffee. Bonanno took the hint and said, “No, I’ll take you. My truck’s got more space for your stuff than a squad car.” He left unspoken that the passenger seat of a truck was much more preferable to the back seat of a police cruiser as far as Eliot was concerned.

Cassie shrank into Eliot’s side, wide-eyed with anxiety. “Do we have to go back there?”

“Just this once,” Eliot said. “You don’t want to spend the rest of the week in just this one outfit, do you?”

“I guess not,” she said reluctantly. “Okay. But only if I don’t ever have to go back.”

He didn’t blame her one bit for refusing to live in that apartment building again. Hell, there was an entire city that Eliot vowed he’d never set foot in again thanks to some God awful memories associated with it. With his daughter’s psychological health in mind, buying a new place to live was nothing. It wasn’t like he didn’t have millions sitting in his account just waiting to be spent.

“I promise,” he said, already turning over possible apartment buildings in the city with comparable or better security in his mind.

Cassie’s fierce grip on his hand loosened just the slightest bit. “In that case, we have to get everything,” she declared. “All my books, and all the kitchen stuff, and Marshmallow, and your guitar, and the pretty sword Mister Nate and Miss Sophie gave you, and my backpack, and my gi, and my sweatshirt I took from you, and my books –”

“You said books already,” Eliot interrupted, mouthing “Don’t ask” at Bonanno, who was mouthing “Mister Nate?” back at him with no inconsiderable amount of amusement. “We’ll get the important stuff, alright? Then I can go back for the rest later.”

“My books are important,” she said insistently. “Right?”

“Yeah, darlin’, your books are important,” Eliot said. “We’ll get ten books, okay? You can pick out which ones. And we’ll get our clothes and empty the fridge and the pantry.”

“But won’t Mister Hardison already have food?” Cassie asked.

“I’ve seen what Hardison eats, and it’s not food,” Eliot said. “It’s a crime against humanity. No, kiddo, we’re taking our food with us.”

“That’s a fair point, and a smart move,” Bonanno said. “And on that note, let’s head out. Your apartment won’t pack itself.”

* * *

Eliot stuck his head around the kitchen entry and peered out at the enormous fort of cushions and blankets that dominated the center of Hardison’s living room. “Are we all set?” he asked.

“Just waiting for the cookies!” the fort answered back in a voice that sounded suspiciously like his daughter’s. “And the milk!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Eliot said. “They’re on their way.” The fort burst into a round of applause, and he took a bow before turning off the oven and removing the tray of piping hot peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies. He transferred them carefully to a cooling rack and tugged off his oven mitts, swiping off a sticky streak of dough that had adhered itself to his wrist earlier. Then, for the third time that day, he gave Gail’s cell phone a call.

The third time was apparently the charm, since she finally answered. “Hey, El,” she said tiredly. “Sorry about earlier.”

His desire to yell at her for worrying him flew straight out the window at the sound of her voice. “Don’t worry about it. You okay? Safe?”

“I’m staying at a hotel downtown,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’m safe. I’m not okay, though. I’m really not okay.”

“Can’t blame you for that,” he said. “Anything on your mind?”

“Yes. This, this _thing_ , it wasn’t about me. I don’t have enemies like that. The only people who’d want to come after me are more likely to do it by putting the Feds on my tail than by sending hired killers to take me out. This was about you. I always knew at least theoretically that you do have those kind of enemies, but….” Gail trailed off.

Eliot finished the thought for her. “But it’s a whole different thing when they actually show up.”

“Exactly,” she said. “I – look, I was scared out of my wits. I was terrified. I forge, El. I make fake medieval manuscripts and counterfeit documents. People in my line of work don’t have a whole lot to do with guns and violence.” She paused and said quietly, “Just say the word, El. Just say the word and I’ll stick with you.”

“I want you to go somewhere safe,” he said, relieving her of her dilemma. “If someone’s coming after me and Cassie, and the worse comes to worst, she’s gonna need at least one guardian still standing at the end of it.”

“El,” she said helplessly. “El, don’t even say stuff like that.”

“We have to be realistic,” Eliot said. “Tactically, getting you the hell out of Dodge is the right choice. Go back to Los Angeles and heal up. I’ll get in touch the usual way when it’s over.”

“Can you forgive me?” she asked.

“We’ve been friends for how long now?” he asked in return. “Fourteen years? You’ve helped raise my _kid_. You moved across the country for us. The real question is can you forgive me for dragging you into my life like this?”

“Don’t be stupid,” she sniffled. “There’s nothing to forgive.”

“And there’s your answer,” he said. “Now do me a favor and go take a painkiller and lie down. Your arm’s probably killing you.”

She chuckled wetly. “I’m going. Give Cassie a hug and a kiss for me.”

“I will,” he told her. “Take care of yourself.”

“You too, El,” she said. “I guess this is goodbye.”

“For now,” he said.

“For now.”

“Goodbye, Gail.”

“Bye, El.”

He ended the call and gazed down at the phone in his hand. A part of him already missed her terribly, but the greater part was simply glad she’d be out of harm’s way. And she knew him well enough not to ask if she should take Cassie with her. The last thing he wanted was another phone call like the one he’d received yesterday. He didn’t think he could take it if he sent her away only to have it all have been in vain. At least with her directly under his eye he knew she was as safe as she could be. He sighed and stuck his phone back in his pocket. There went Gail: kind, steady, reliable Gail, Cassie’s unofficial mother and the reason his daughter was an incurable bookworm. There was no way he was breaking this particular piece of news to his daughter tonight.

He took down a large plate from the cabinet and moved all two dozen cookies, now just pleasantly warm, onto the surface. Two large, frosty glasses of low fat milk followed. He carried his burden out to the living room carefully, calling to Cassie, “Dessert has arrived. Permission to enter, Captain?”

“Granted,” she called back. He knelt and set the plate and glasses down, pushing them ahead of him as he crawled into the fort on hands and knees. Cassie, freshly bathed and drowning in his old sweatshirt that she liked to use as a nightgown, met him halfway to take her glass from him. “They smell amazing!” she gushed.

“We did a good job,” he said. He trailed after her to the back of the fort where they’d piled bed pillows and a thick comforter into a cozy two person nest. “You didn’t get started without me, did you?”

“No,” she said, looking suddenly shifty. “Of course not.”

“Of course not,” he echoed, suppressing a laugh. “But you did pick out a book, right?”

“I couldn’t decide,” she said. She put the glass aside and flopped down on the nest, brandishing the two books. “You choose.”

“Let’s see,” he said seriously. He took the proffered books and lay down next to her. Warmth bloomed in his chest as she curled into him, insinuating herself between his arm and his chest with a little sound of contentment. “Well, ‘Where the Sidewalk Ends’ has lots of good poems, but ‘The Wind in the Willows’ has fun characters and an interesting plot. Which do you want more right now? Poetry or fiction?”

“Fiction,” she said, equally serious. “You have to do the voices, though.”

“Are you kidding?” he said. “The voices are the best part. Have a cookie and settle in, kiddo. We have a lot of reading ahead of us.” He waited until she had a cookie in her hand and her glass within dunking reach, and then he flipped open the book to the first page. “The mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat.”

They made it four chapters in, along with a sizeable dent in the plate of cookies, before Eliot heard low voices outside the apartment. He left off reading as a key turned in the lock. The door opened, and after several seconds of stunned silence, Hardison’s voice issued from outside the fort.

“What happened to my living room?”

Eliot tightened his hold on Cassie and forced himself to take deep, even breaths. “Come on in,” he said, feigning casualness. “We’re in here.”

Parker laughed, and someone dropped to their knees. Eliot wasn’t surprised that she was the first person to crawl inside. Hardison, Sophie, and Nate piled in after her. It was a tight fit, but Cassie had specified a huge fort, and Eliot had made it large enough to cover five adults and one very little girl without too much trouble. Once they were all inside, they stared in disbelief at the sight of Eliot cuddled up with his daughter, reading a book and munching on cookies.

“Who...how…what?” Hardison said weakly.

Oddly, his bewilderment helped settle Eliot’s nerves somewhat. “Cassie, meet my team,” he said. “Guys, meet my daughter Cassie.” A wicked impulse seized him, and he pushed the plate of cookies across the space to his staring colleagues. “Cookie?”


	4. Chapter Three

Predictably, Sophie recovered her composure first. “Thank you, Eliot. They smell lovely,” she said, not taking her eyes off of Cassie as she reached for a cookie. “I don’t suppose you had a little helper in the kitchen?”

“I mixed the dough,” Cassie said shyly. “And I made the marks on the top with a fork. Do you like it?”

Sophie took a dainty bite and chewed thoughtfully, watching Cassie fidget nervously. She let Cassie sweat it out for a few more seconds before giving in with an approving smile. “I love it. In fact, I think you may have found your calling. It’s delicious.”

“Thank you,” Cassie said politely. “Dad’s the cook though. I’m just his, his…his soose chef. Right Dad?”

“There’s no better sous chef than you,” Eliot said. Cassie burrowed deeper into his side, and he rubbed her arm reassuringly. God, his poor kid. It had been an eventful couple days, and now she sat facing four adults she knew by name only who she desperately wanted to like her. It was hardly a surprise that she was doing her best to sound grown up and proper.

“You’re a charming little girl,” Sophie said with a smile calculated to set her at ease. “Eliot, where have you been keeping her?”

“Safely hidden away from all of you and your bad influence,” Eliot said. Cassie giggled and turned her face into his shoulder at Sophie and Hardison’s indignant looks.

“Excuse me?” Hardison said. “Bad influence? Bad influence? I’ll have you know that I am a paragon of virtue and an excellent role model. And a genius, can’t forget that.”

“You live off gummi frogs and hot pockets,” Eliot said, “And you’re having a love affair with your computer. But I’ll give you genius. Annoying genius.”

Hardison cast his gaze to the roof of the fort as if to ask for divine help. “I let you move in with me, and all I get is a pillow fort in my living room and cookies I can’t eat. I have a peanut allergy. Did you take that into consideration when you took over my kitchen? No, of course not. That would involve caring about my feelings. You’re heartless, Eliot, you hear me? Heartless.”

“Relax, I scrubbed down the counters,” Eliot said. “The cookies are for Cassie, anyway. I promised last night that we’d make them.”

“He did,” Parker said, backing up his claim. “I was there.” She snagged a couple cookies for herself and bit off a large chunk of one, chewing with apparent relish.

“Well, if they were for the little Spencer, then that’s okay,” Hardison said. “But I expect cookies I can eat sometime in the very near future. Consider it rent.”

That was Hardison all over: one minute he was driving Eliot up the wall, and the next he turned around and said or did something that reminded Eliot why he was friends with the guy in the first place. He couldn’t help but be grateful to Hardison – to all of them, really – for the distinct lack of intrusive, unwelcome questions, but he knew they were holding back out of consideration for the pint-sized girl snuggled up beside him. As soon as he put her to bed, the self-censoring they were doing was going to come to a sudden and possibly noisy end.

“You should have introduced us properly,” Sophie chided Eliot. She met Cassie’s eyes and said warmly, “My name is Sophie.”

Cassie straightened a bit, pulling courage from Sophie’s introduction to say in a confident manner, “I know who you are. You’re Miss Sophie. And you’re Miss Parker, and you’re Mister Hardison, and you’re Mister Nate.”

“Mister?” Hardison repeated, casting a look of disbelief at Eliot.

“Her teacher’s big on manners,” Eliot said. “I think it’s cute.”

“It’s very cute,” Sophie said. “And how do you know who we all are?”

“Dad said that if there’s an emergency and he doesn’t answer his phone, I’m supposed to call you,” Cassie explained. “He said you were very good people.”

Nate broke his silence to say, “He said that, huh?” His face and his body language were unreadable. Eliot knew without a doubt that this didn’t bode well for him. Not one bit.

“Uh-huh,” Cassie said, oblivious to the tension mounting from Nate’s corner of the tent. She tugged Eliot’s sleeve and whispered loudly, “Dad, _who_ are they? Are they like Aunt Gail?”

“You mean like family?” Eliot asked. Cassie nodded.

Family. What a word. He hadn’t seen his family in almost a decade, and he could honestly say that he had no clue if Cassie would meet them. Hell, his mom and dad didn’t even know they had another grandchild to dote on. Two phone calls a year from a secure line with a restricted number was the only contact they had with him. They thought he worked for a private contracting company overseas. He was in no rush to correct this belief.

But he made family where there hadn’t been one before, and he gave that family to his daughter to make up for the lack of the one she didn’t have. She deserved more family than just a dad. He’d given her one aunt, and that aunt would be on the other side of the country before the week was out. It was about time she gained some more aunts and uncles.

He looked around the crowded fort. Sophie, Parker, and Hardison looked back at him expectantly. Nate’s expressionless face hadn’t changed. Under better circumstances, though, Nate would most likely be giving him some variation of that expectant look. “Yeah, darlin’, they’re family. See, Nate’s sort of like a frustrating older brother who never runs out of crazy ideas, and for some reason he thinks he’s our dad. Sophie’s like the fun older sister who frequently goes kind of overboard and gets a little exasperating. Parker’s like a strange little sister who’s somehow both really weird and sort of cute at the same time. And Hardison, well, Hardison’s like the annoying little brother you wish you never had but you honestly can’t live without.” Stone faced Nate didn’t react, but Parker, Sophie, and Hardison seemed torn between being flattered and being insulted. Eliot silently congratulated himself on a job well done.

“I’m not sure how to take that,” Hardison said.

Parker smiled widely. It was unnervingly adorable. “And Eliot’s the grumpy one stuck in the middle of all of us.”

“My dad’s not grumpy!” Cassie said defensively. Parker, Hardison, and Sophie couldn’t hold back their snickers at her shocked pronouncement. “He’s not!”

“Of course he isn’t,” Sophie said, attempting to soothe her prickly feelings. “He’s just impatient at times.”

“Oh, that.” Cassie nodded sagely. “Dad and Aunt Gail are really impatient. But not with me. Just with my teacher, and bad drivers, and people who get their coffee order wrong, and referees who miss stuff, and editors who miss stuff, and advertisements with pretty women who need to eat more and put on more clothes, for God’s sake.” The last was almost word for word how Eliot described ads for fashion and perfume. The snickers devolved into helpless giggles, even from Hardison.

“I can’t believe it,” Sophie said through her laughter. “Eliot Spencer, father of the year. Have I gone mad? I must be imagining things.”

“We’re all a little crazy,” Eliot said. “We have to be, doing what we do. And this father of the year has a daughter to put to bed.”

“But I’m not tired,” Cassie protested.

“That’s the sugar talking,” Eliot said. “I give it ten, fifteen minutes before you’re out like a light. Let’s go, kiddo. Say goodnight, and we’ll go get you ready for bed.”

She made a little moue of disappointment, but she waved at Eliot’s team with a sweet smile nonetheless. “Goodnight, Aunt Sophie. Goodnight, Aunt Parker. Goodnight, Uncle Hardison. Goodnight, Uncle Nate.”

A chorus of goodnights followed from her newly adopted aunts and uncles, three of whom looked utterly besotted and one of whom looked reluctantly charmed despite his best efforts to the contrary. Cassie gave them one last wave and crawled out the “secret tunnel” at the back of the fort.

“Be back in a few,” Eliot said, grabbing two of the pillows from their cozy little nest and following her out.

“I like them,” Cassie said as soon as Eliot was out of the fort and back on his feet. “They’re nice.”

Aware that they could hear every word, he replied, “They have their moments.”

“ _Dad_ ,” she said, distinctly unimpressed with his less than enthusiastic endorsement.

He laughed at her scolding tone. “Yeah, okay. Me too. Now come on, darlin’, it’s time to brush your teeth and go to bed. Now, do you –”

She preempted his question by saying in the most grown up manner she could muster, “I can brush my teeth by myself.”

“I believe you,” Eliot said. “Remember, not too much toothpaste, and –”

“And don’t forget my back teeth,” she said. “I know. I’m not a baby.”

He looked down at his daughter, all three feet eight inches of her, and had to smile. “Oh, Cassie. When you’re all grown up and having adventures of your own, you’re still gonna be my little girl. It’s a dad thing.”

“Dad things don’t make sense,” she told him. “But you’re the best dad ever, so I guess it’s okay.”

“Go brush your teeth, kiddo,” he said, nudging her gently. “I’m gonna go get your bed ready.”

She took off for the bathroom with a spring in her step. Eliot watched her disappear around the corner before heading to the smaller of Hardison’s two guest rooms. He had to admit, Hardison had good taste in interior design. It wasn’t his style – too sleek and modern, not warm or homey enough – but it fit their token geek perfectly. Well, almost. The Hardison he knew and pretended not to like had a shelf of superhero dolls in his bedroom and had drunkenly confided in him one night that his first time had been at a comic book convention with Catwoman. Eliot had needed a lot more beer after that confession. It was too bad he’d never gotten the hang of drinking so much he forgot what happened the following morning.

He put the disturbing memory firmly out of mind. There’d be time to contemplate his team’s many, many quirks later, if ever at all. Cassie’s bed wasn’t going to make itself. The two pillows, cases smoothed out and insides fluffed, went at the top of the bed. Marshmallow, Cassie’s giant, well-loved, stuffed white rabbit, took pride of place in the center of the two pillows, waiting for skinny little arms to squeeze it tight in sleep. The daisy shaped nightlight plugged in by the door cast a soft glow across the floor with a flip of a switch. And there in the doorway, cutting a comical figure with her sleeves dangling far past the tips of her fingers and the hood of her sweatshirt almost swallowing her head, stood Cassie, ready and waiting to be tucked in.

“I’m all done,” she announced. “See?” She bared two rows of little white teeth at him. Two rows, minus one tooth on the bottom that had fallen out two weeks earlier. Eliot remembered when her very first tooth came in. Now she was busy losing those teeth and getting her adult teeth in. One of these days he’d turn around and find out she needed braces. His kid, he thought, was growing up way too fast for his taste.

“I see,” he said, bending down and inspecting them closely. She giggled and blew a lungful of minty breath into his face. “I smell it, too. Get in bed, kiddo. It’s time to sleep.”

“I’m still not tired,” she said. She immediately contradicted herself with a yawn. “That didn’t count. I didn’t mean it.”

“Yeah you did,” he said. He picked her up and carried her to the bed where he dropped her, wriggling and shrieking with laughter, right in the center.

Cassie dove under the covers, dragging Marshmallow along with her. Eliot sat on the edge and waited for her to make herself comfortable. It didn’t take long before a wild mop of curls popped up from beneath the blankets, followed by a pale forehead and bright blue eyes. Next came a little nose, straight and narrow, and a big, sunny smile. “I’m all ready now,” she said.

Eliot leaned over and kissed her forehead. “Sweet dreams, darlin’. I love you.”

“I love you too,” Cassie said, returning the kiss with one smack on the tip of his nose. “Night, Dad.”

“Goodnight.”

Eliot left her room quietly, closing the door behind him carefully so as not to make a sound. He took a moment to center himself. It was time to face the music. He went back to the living room braced for the worst.

They’d dismantled Cassie’s fort while he’d been gone. The four of them had taken up seats on the couch and one of the armchairs, leaving him only the remaining armchair as an option to sit. Eight eyes tracked his movement across the room. Four mouths opened to fire off questions as soon as he sat down. He held up a hand to cut off the oncoming flood.

“One at a time,” he said. “And keep it down. I don’t want you waking my kid.”

Parker broke the silence first. “Can I teach her how to pick locks?” she asked eagerly, repeating her question from the previous night. Hardison shot her a sidelong, incredulous glance that she blithely ignored in favor of poking through the plate of cookies balanced on her crossed legs.

Eliot’s immediate instinct was to say no, but a string of worst case scenarios danced through his mind and his answer changed before he’d even realized it. “Maybe,” he said instead. “I’ll think about it.”

That was as good as a yes, and they all knew it. He was as good as agreeing to let Parker teach his six year old daughter how to be a professional criminal just like the rest of them. He wanted better for her; he always had. He wanted her to be a chef, a surgeon, an archeologist, a musician, a pilot, an artist – he wanted her to have something other than the foregone conclusion that she’d be a second generation criminal, taking after her dad and mom. But she’d been raised by a hitter and a forger, her mom was a grifter, and he’d just introduced her to a team of thieves. Keeping Cassie on the right side of the law had been a losing battle from the start.

“You’re the best, grumpy,” she said. She raised a cookie in a salute and took a large bite.

“Let me just start by saying that I brought your stuff back home with me,” Hardison said, pointing to his suitcase in the corner. “Contacts, clothes – it all made it back from the hotel.”

“Thanks, man,” Eliot said. “Appreciate it.”

“Now that that’s out of the way, I have to ask,” Hardison said. “Where the hell did _you_ get a kid?”

And there went all his appreciation, straight out the window. “I found her at the bottom of a crackerjack box,” Eliot said. “How do you think I got her? I know you don’t have much experience in that department, but you did get the Talk when you were a kid, right?”

“Okay, A, that’s not what I meant,” Hardison said. “And B, it was more of a ‘who the hell gave you a kid?’ question.”

“That’s worse,” Eliot said, stung. “That’s plain insulting. I’m a lot of things, Hardison, but I love my daughter and I do my best to do right by her. As for who the hell gave me Cassie, her mom didn’t want anything to do with raising a child, and I wasn’t about to walk away.”

Sophie smoothly cut off Hardison and Eliot’s conversation with a well-timed question of her own. “Who is her mother, by the way?”

“I don’t know if you’ve ever run across her,” Eliot said. “Last time I checked, she was going by Genevieve Lachance between cons.”

“Ooh, Genevieve?” Sophie said, her eyes lighting up. “I met her once when she was just getting started. I hate to admit it, but I was just a bit jealous when I saw her.”

“Ow c’m?” Parker asked through a mouthful of cookie. “Y’r v besh.”

“Thank you, Parker,” Sophie said graciously. “But it had nothing to do with talent. Rather, she could waltz straight through doors I’d never so much as get a foot past.”

“She’s that hot?” Hardison asked.

“She’s that innocent looking,” Sophie said. “Little waifish thing with an utterly disarming smile. How on Earth did you meet her?”

“Job in Belgium,” Eliot said with a shrug. “There’s not much to tell.”

“In other words, it’s a very interesting story that you’re not going to share,” Sophie said.

“Something like that,” Eliot agreed. “Anything else?”

“Who’s Aunt Gail?” Parker asked.

“Gail Franklin,” Eliot said. “Forger. Doubt you know her. She does illuminated manuscripts and medieval art. I know she’s done a few Flemish artists before, but that’s not her specialty.”

“Can’t say I recognize the name,” Sophie said. “Parker?”

“I’ve never stolen anything from that era,” Parker said. “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Hold up,” Hardison said. “Career wise, I’ve never heard of her. But the name rings a bell. Didn’t you have some escort named Gail come get you after you got worked over at the carnival?”

“I didn’t want to go to the hospital, and she wanted to have some fun,” Eliot said. “Good memory.”

“Damn,” Hardison said. “She’s – wow. Are you and her –”

“She’s a lesbian,” Eliot said. “Next?”

In the chair across from Eliot, Nate dug his fingers into the arms and pinned him with a flat, hard look. “I thought we were clear on the fact that we were done keeping secrets from each other.”

“Up until yesterday, a grand total of three people knew I had a daughter, including me,” Eliot said. “It was for her protection. The fewer people who knew the better.”

“If I recall correctly, you called us family less than half an hour ago,” Nate said. “You should have told us.”

“When?” Eliot asked. “Tell me, Nate, when was I supposed to tell you? When we did our first job together? ‘I’m really sorry to hear about your kid. Mine’s at home playing with finger paints that I never should have bought her.’ When we split up for six months? ‘I’m gonna miss you guys, but I’ve been wanting to take Cassie to a country without people after my head for a while, and I could use the break.’ When we got back together? ‘No, I wasn’t actually in Pakistan; I was playing with my kid on a beach in Costa Rica.’ When you found out about my history with Moreau? ‘By the way, since we’re getting it all out there, I have a daughter, too. Is this gonna be a problem?’ Come on. When the hell was I supposed to tell you?”

“At any –” Nate checked himself and lowered his voice from a yell to a harsh whisper. “At any God damned time. We have to be able to trust each other. The only way to do that is to be honest.”

“The more people who know about Cassie, the more danger she’s in,” Eliot said.

“She’s in danger anyway,” Nate shot back, getting to his feet. “She almost died last night. Not telling us didn’t make a difference. Did you even consider that we could have helped look out for her?”

Eliot stood as well, barely controlling the flinch Nate’s words brought on. “I can’t undo choices I already made. Maybe you could’ve helped. Maybe you couldn’t. You know about her now. Move the hell on.”

“This is no way to raise a kid,” Nate said. His anger was almost palpable. “How are you supposed to take care of a little girl when you’re constantly off cracking skulls and coming home beat to hell and back?”

“I’m there for her,” Eliot growled. “I taught her how to walk, I potty trained her, I stayed up all night with her for days when she had the chicken pox. Her first word was Dada. We cook together. We read together. I check her homework for mistakes. I tuck her in at night. I taught her how to defend herself against bullies. I go to parent-teacher conferences. Don’t you _dare_ say I don’t take care of my daughter.” He paused as he realized the source of Nate’s ire. Knowing what Nate’s reaction would be, he continued, saying levelly, “What bothers you more? That you didn’t know you weren’t the only parent on the team? Or that my kid’s still alive, and you think you deserve to be a father more than me?”

Pain blossomed across his face as Nate’s fist met his mouth. He gingerly touched his lower lip and pulled bloody fingers away. “That was a free shot,” he told Nate. “I earned that. But you don’t get another one. Still, to be honest, you do deserve to be a dad, way more than I do. Hell, I don’t deserve to have a kid, period. But I have one, and I love her, and you’re right. I could use your help. I need help keeping her safe. The old way got shot to hell. I won’t blame you if you say no, but I could really use the team on this.”

“You don’t have to ask,” Sophie said. She stood and gave Nate a little push on the chest, forcing him back down into his chair. “We’re a team. As you said, we’re family. You don’t have to stand alone. Now sit down, and we’ll hash this out like adults. Hardison, get ice for Eliot’s mouth, please. I’d hate for Cassie to wake to the sight of her father wearing a fat lip on his face.”

“On it,” Hardison said. “And no more violence in my apartment. If I have to clean bloodstains out of my furniture I’m gonna be very disappointed in both of y’all.” He left them behind to find Eliot an icepack. Only a handful of seconds passed before the sound of the refrigerator door opening reached Eliot’s ears. It was followed swiftly by an outraged, “Oh, hell no. Eliot, what did you do to my kitchen?”

“I put real food in it,” Eliot called back to him. “You’re welcome.”

“You better cook for me,” Hardison said as he rejoined them in the living room, a bag of ice wrapped in a kitchen towel in his hand. “Here.”

“Thanks, man.” Eliot held the ice up to his lip, letting the cold soothe the dull throb.

“So what’s the plan?” Parker asked. “The Panama Dash? The Queen of Spades? The Norwegian Tourist?”

“We can’t run a con when we don’t even know who the mark is,” Sophie said. “Eliot? Do you have any idea who might be behind this?”

“It’s a long list,” Eliot said. “Too long. The problem with being one of the best in your field, and having the reputation that comes with it, is that you’ve made a lot of enemies on your way to the top. So no, I don’t have any idea. I’m just gonna have to go back through and rule people out one by one.”

“We’ll help you sort through it,” Sophie said.

Eliot tensed. “That’s not a good idea. The things I’ve done – you don’t want to go poking around my past. It’s an ugly place.”

“You don’t have to tell us everything,” Sophie said. “You don’t even have to go into detail. But we need to have some idea of what to expect, and the best way to get that is for you to share information that might help us track down whoever hired those men.”

“You can trust us, man,” Hardison added. “You know that.”

“I know I can,” Eliot said. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that they trusted him. He didn’t want to lose that. “Yeah. Okay. But not tonight. We can start tomorrow.”

“What do you need in the meantime?” Sophie asked.

“Cassie needs her homework picked up from school, and everything in my apartment needs to be boxed and moved to a storage locker. I’d do it myself, but it’s not a smart move to go back to places they already know about.” Eliot thought a moment and added, “We can’t use the office until this is over. If they found my apartment, they know about McRory’s. Hardison’s loft has to double as HQ for now. Don’t take the same route here each time. Predictability can get you killed.”

“I’ll get little Spencer’s homework,” Hardison said. “I have to pick up Megabyte from the doggy hotel tomorrow morning anyway.”

“Nate and I will take your apartment,” Parker said. “Right, Nate?”

“Right,” Nate said. He gave Eliot a barely perceptible nod. Eliot nodded back. They weren’t one hundred percent yet, but Nate’s anger had blown over, and Eliot suspected that their shared fatherhood would add a new facet to their unlikely friendship once Nate got over Eliot’s secrecy.

“You’re the expert,” Sophie said. “Right then. Hardison’s tomorrow, noon?”

“Make it two,” Nate said. “Eliot’s apartment’s going to take more time than that to get done. And if we’re going to do it, then I need to head home and turn in for the night. It’s way past my bedtime.”

“I’m completely done in,” Sophie agreed. “I’ll head out with you.”

Parker pouted at the empty plate. “Your kid’s asleep and the cookies are gone. I’ll be back tomorrow when she’s awake.”

“I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something about your priorities that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me,” Eliot said. “But goodnight, see you tomorrow, be careful, et cetera.”

Hardison shooed them out the door after a quick round of goodbyes from Sophie, Parker, and Nate. “Stay here,” he told Eliot, and he made another quick trip to the kitchen.

“It’s a little late for that,” Eliot said when Hardison came back with a six pack of his favorite craft beer and a bottle opener.

“I’m too tired to sleep,” Hardison said. He popped the lids off two of the bottles and passed one over to Eliot. “Entertain me.”

“I’m not here for your entertainment,” Eliot said. He took a long pull off his bottle and settled back into the armchair.

“It’s you or a Star Trek marathon, and that’d wake little Spencer,” Hardison said. “So. Why are you doing the single dad thing? There have to be women out there who’d like to get their hands on you on a more permanent basis than just a one night stand.”

“All the good ones are gay, taken, or off limits,” Eliot said. “And by good I mean women I’d be willing to trust with my life. I can count the good ones on one hand and still have a finger or two left over. Plus I’m happy with how things stand. Cassie and me make a good team.”

Hardison ticked off names on his fingers. “Your friend Gail’s gay, Sophie and Parker are taken, and – who’s off limits?”

“Maggie.”

“Oh, yeah. Way off limits.” Hardison said. “I see what you mean.”

Eliot rolled his head back and forth to release the tension in his neck. “Yep. That it? Can I hit the sack now?”

“Nah, man,” Hardison said, grinning. “Tell me how you met your kid’s mom.”

“It’s a boring story,” Eliot said. “Seriously, there’s nothing interesting about it.”

“You never have boring stories,” Hardison said. “Tell.”

Eliot looked from the beers on the coffee table to the wall clock to Hardison’s eager face and gave in. “Fine. But don’t interrupt.”

Hardison mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. Eliot snorted softly in amusement. Well, it was one way to pass the time.

“I was in Brussels in Two Thousand and Four, early September. The Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium was having a special exhibit, and I was there on a job….”


	5. Chapter Four

September 3, 2004  
Brussels, Belgium

One month. He’d been in Belgium for one whole month, scraping by on his barely passable French and keeping a close watch on the bank account set up under his current identity’s name. He was the first one in and the last one out for his security shift at the museum. He went out for drinks after work once or twice a week with a couple other guards. He’d made himself indispensable as the go-to translator for tourists.

In short, when the exhibit opened in two weeks, no one would tie the theft of the Bosch he’d been commissioned to retrieve to friendly, easygoing Sean Greeley until he was long gone. The problem, as far as he was concerned, was the wait. Eliot was not the waiting type. He scoped out a location, came up with a plan, and got the hell out in under a week. He’d had to wait an entire month already, and there were still two weeks to go before liftoff.

He. Was. _Bored._ And boredom was a bad thing for Eliot these days. Too much time on his hands gave his mind too much time to think about things that ought to be shoved down deep and forgotten instead. He’d had a whole month, one whole month, with too much time to think, and he was looking down the barrel of another two weeks of thinking. It was a good thing he had a job lined up on the other side of the world once this was over. He’d be back to bouncing from country to country in no time, with his head too full of the specs of his various jobs to go poking at old wounds.

A light laugh echoed across the gallery. Eliot smiled reflexively. A sound as purely happy as that laugh was contagious. He craned his neck, trying to see around visitors to match a face to the laugh. All he caught was a glimpse of dark blonde hair and pale skin.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Daan Janssen, a fellow security guard, commented. “She was here yesterday morning, too. Wouters was bending over backwards for her.”

“The director wouldn’t do that for just anyone,” Eliot said. He redoubled his efforts to get a look at the laughing girl. “She’s probably the daughter of a donor or something like that.”

“She must be,” Daan said. “I think if she comes back again tomorrow I’ll introduce myself. Yes, I think I will.”

Eliot eyed Daan’s graying hair and slight paunch. “She’s probably young enough to be your daughter.”

“Age is just a number, my friend,” Daan said. “When you’ve had as much life experience as I have, then you’ll understand.”

Eliot’s reply flew straight out of his mind as the visitors parted just enough for him to finally see the girl fully. Not a girl, but a young woman, small and delicate, a natural glow warming her cheeks and her hair held back in a half ponytail. His first reaction should have been to note how young and sweet she looked. It should have been. Instead, he took the opportunity to scrutinize her face while she was busy paying attention to something else.

He’d seen that very same face at an upscale gallery in Rome ten months ago, and if his job had taught him one thing, it was that there was no such thing as coincidence on this side of the law. Either she was after the same piece he was, or he wasn’t the only one taking advantage of the fuss over the special exhibit to pull off a theft.

The face he’d been studying so intently turned in his direction before he’d decided on a course of action, and her eyes met his. Her poker face was excellent; if her eyes hadn’t widened just the slightest bit, he would’ve believed that she hadn’t seen him before in her life. But small as it was, it was still a tell. On instinct, he turned his scrutiny into a flirtatious smile and pointed at the floor before discreetly flashing her his hand with all five fingers showing. He closed his hand and opened it again. She nodded and returned the smile.

“You lucky bastard,” Daan said, clapping Eliot hard on the back. “I was going to ask for a date tomorrow, and you catch her attention in a measly two minutes. You young men. I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Eliot said. He checked his watch. “Shift’s almost over. I’m gonna change and meet this mystery girl in the lobby.”

“You? Leaving early? What has the world come to?”

“Pretty paintings or a pretty girl,” Eliot said. “Hmm. I think I’ll take the pretty girl.”

Daan threw back his head and laughed. “Ha! I’ll see you tomorrow, Sean. Enjoy your date.”

Eliot ducked into the employee changing room for the fastest uniform change he’d ever made, stopping only to check and see that his short hair hadn’t been ruffled by his dash to change into street clothes. He deemed himself presentable and walked to the lobby as fast as he could without breaking into a run. He made it to the front doors just as she was arriving.

“What’s the rush?” she asked. Her eyes were guarded and wary above her teasing smile, and she had a foot pointed straight at the door, poised to flee if things went south.

“I didn’t want to leave a beautiful woman waiting,” Eliot said. He kept his posture loose and unthreatening.

“Ah, an American!” she exclaimed, switching to English tinged with a hint of a French accent. Her accent sounded genuine. He wondered how long she’d worked on her pronunciation to get it right. “How surprising! And you’re employed here?”

He gladly followed suit, playing up his southern accent as he did. “That I am. The name’s Sean, Sean Greeley. Pleased to meet you.”

“And you as well, Sean Greeley,” she said. “I’m Emma Maes. I’m an art student.”

“Maes,” Eliot said. “Any relation to Louis Maes?”

“Yes,” she said with a light blush. “He was my grandfather. I’m truly blessed to have such a noted patron of the arts in my family.”

That explained the director’s behavior. Louis Maes had been one of the most generous donors to the museum in the past fifty years. “You sure are,” Eliot said. “An art student, huh? Any artist in particular that catches your eye around here?”

She visibly steeled herself. “I’m a fan of Jan Van Eyck,” she said. “The portrait of his wife is my favorite.”

“I’m more of a Hieronymus Bosch guy, myself,” Eliot said. He grinned at her exaggerated sigh of relief. “Opening night?”

“Opening night,” she said, her eyes losing their wary cast. “I don’t suppose you feel like having company for supper, do you?”

“There’s a little place about a mile from here that’s usually pretty busy around this hour,” Eliot said. “Might be nice to go and get to know each other over dinner and drinks.”

“I’m looking forward to it already,” she said, and practically floated out the door and down to the street to hail a taxi, dragging Eliot behind her by the sleeve of his jacket.

The table they chose at the restaurant was small and out of the way, perfect for a private conversation. The noise level at nearby tables would keep them from being overheard should anyone attempt to listen in on them. Even with these precautions, they still kept up small talk about their current identities, waiting until their entrees arrived before diving into the conversation they were both itching to have.

“Genevieve Lachance,” she said, sticking her hand across the table for him to shake. Her accent was one hundred percent undiluted southern Californian.

He shook her hand firmly, oddly reluctant to share his name. Genevieve took a drink from her glass of beer and made an impatient “get on with it” gesture. “Eliot Spencer,” he said.

She promptly choked on her drink, coughing violently. “Eliot _Spencer_?” she repeated as soon as her coughing fit ended. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“I don’t think a whole lot of people are stupid enough to go around calling themselves Eliot Spencer when they’re not,” Eliot said. “That’s my name. I take it you know who I am?”

“Who doesn’t?” she asked rhetorically. “You’re, well…don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re a lot less scary than I thought you’d be.”

That startled a laugh out of Eliot. “I don’t hear that a lot,” he said. “Thanks. That’s actually the nicest thing I’ve heard in a while.”

“You’re just spending your time with the wrong people,” she said.

“Yeah, I don’t hear a whole lot of people telling me I’m not scary,” Eliot said. “Makes sense, since I’m usually there to be all scary and intimidating.”

“Hazards of the job,” she said, her smile returning. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to run screaming into the night. I’m enjoying myself too much for that.”

“That’s good to know,” Eliot said. “It’d hurt my feelings if you did.”

Were they flirting? He mentally rewound their conversation. Yes, they were flirting. More to the point, he was flirting, for the first time in close to a year. Somehow someone had actually captured his attention, and it had nothing to do with a job. It had been a long ten months. The first had been the longest, a drawn out, miserable binge of cheap whiskey and cheaper beer. After he’d gotten his act together, everything had been about work, job after job after job, one country to the next without any time to breathe. No time to think, either, and that was the important part. That was the most important part of all.

But there he sat at a little table at the back of a restaurant with a woman who knew his name, knew his reputation, and wasn’t frightened. A grifter, someone he didn’t have to play a part around. Someone clever, who’d actually be interesting to talk to for once, as opposed to the people in the circles in which he usually ran. Someone who, for whatever reason, made him feel more normal, more alive, than he had since Hong Kong.

He decided it didn’t matter if it lasted the evening or the entire two weeks he had left. He felt alive, and he was willing to gamble on that feeling. “You go ahead and tell me if I’m being too forward, but I’m a great cook,” he said. “And one of my favorite meals of the day is breakfast.”

The candlelight turned Genevieve’s dark brown eyes almost bronze as she leaned across the table. “I don’t know,” she said, lacing her fingers through his. “Do you take requests? Because I’d love to sink my teeth into a plateful of hot, sweet, rich – French toast.”

“Oh, I think I can manage that,” Eliot said. “And how do you feel about midnight snacks?”

“I’m sure we can find a way to work up the appetite,” she said. “There’s a long time between now and midnight, and I don’t have any plans.”

Eliot leaned in as well, so close that their noses almost touched. “I think we should cut out before dessert,” he said. “How ‘bout you?”

“You’ll get no argument from me,” she said.

A night of fun, uncomplicated pleasure with an attractive woman looking for the same – the next two weeks suddenly seemed much more bearable than they had an hour ago. Who knew; maybe it was time for him to start living again. He could allow himself this at the least. It wasn’t like enjoying himself for the next couple weeks would have much effect on his life in the grand scheme of things.

“Great,” he said. He let his gaze drop briefly to her lips, plump and rosy pink, before meeting her eyes again. “I can think of sweeter desserts, anyway.”

Oh, yes. This would be a very enjoyable two weeks.

* * *

September 18, 2004

“How did a guy like you end up getting into cooking?” Genevieve asked on the morning of the exhibit opening, her head propped up in her hand and her feet dangling off the bed where she lay, clad only in one of Eliot’s shirts and a lacy pair of underwear.

Eliot turned off the burner and slid the omelet out of the pan and onto a plate. He carried his burden, along with a napkin and two sets of silverware, out of the kitchenette and over to the bed. “The usual way. Take one cocky high school quarterback, stick him in Home Ec out of appreciation for his teacher’s truly spectacular cleavage, and by the end of the semester he’s paying more attention to the food than the breasts.” He had to laugh at her surprise. “What, you thought ‘guys like me’ just came out of nowhere? No, I went to school and grew up just like everybody else.”

“I shouldn’t be so shocked,” Genevieve said. She sat up, folding her bare legs beneath her, and accepted a knife and fork from Eliot. “My childhood was disgustingly normal, and look at me now, twenty four years old and grifting my way across Europe.”

“How’d you fall into it?” Eliot asked.

Genevieve shrugged expressively. “Boredom. You?”

“Got a job offer that sounded interesting, and I took it,” Eliot said. “Curiosity, I guess.”

“Mm, boredom and curiosity. That’s a dangerous combination,” Genevieve said. “Ooh. That’s delicious. I’d ask for the recipe, but it’s not safe to let me loose in a kitchen unsupervised.”

Eliot cut off a piece for himself and popped it in his mouth. “Enjoy this omelet, then, ‘cause I’m on the redeye out to Munich the minute the job’s done.”

“Believe me, I’m savoring every bite,” she said. “It does make me wonder, though. You explained the how, but what about the why? Why do you bother? I doubt you have the time or resources to do it terribly often.”

“Because,” Eliot said, and broke off, unsure how to respond. She wouldn’t really understand him if he answered her with complete honesty. Life, at least on the road he walked, was ugly, violent, and bleak. Sometimes he’d go for months at a time not seeing a friendly face. He didn’t sit with his back to doors or windows anymore; he’d learned that lesson the hard way, and had the scar to prove it. The people he worked for were not good men. Not good women, either. Friends were hard to come by. He’d been in the game for seven years and he had just one real friend to show for it. Other people had to wash grass and chocolate stains from their clothes. He washed blood from his. The pay was good and he’d been to more countries than most people visited in their entire lives, but there was nothing about it that he could honestly say was clean or pleasant. He knew that, and he accepted that. But everyone needed something good to help balance out the bad. There was a lot of bad, and cooking was just a little thing, but – but when he hit a rough patch, or when a job gave him a psychological sucker punch, he found a grocery store and a kitchen. And he cooked. It wasn’t much, but it was usually enough.

“Because I have a knack for it,” Eliot said. “Besides, it’s nice being good at something other than busting heads and breaking knees.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. You were great with that little Taiwanese kid yesterday,” Genevieve said. “I have to admit, you being good with children somehow seems even stranger than you cooking. So how does someone in your line of work end up able to connect to kids so well?”

Someday that question wouldn’t cause the gut deep pain it brought on now. Today wasn’t that day. “The short answer is that I’m the oldest of three, and got conscripted into babysitting a lot growing up. The longer one is that kids are special. Different. They all start out as these innocent little things who treat the world like it’s one big playground. When they grow up they find out it’s actually a pretty scary place, and that people do bad things to each other. War, murder, drugs – it’s enough to give some adults nightmares. Kids shouldn’t have to learn that for a good long while. Sure, it’s just an illusion of safety, but kids ought to be able to feel safe. It’s not right when that gets stolen from them.”

“I wasn’t expecting that,” Genevieve said. “You feel that strongly about it?”

“It’s – pardon me for saying so, but it’s fucking tragic when something happens to a kid,” Eliot said. “There’s no forgiving someone who hurts a child.”

She didn’t press him on the subject. “So the big, bad hitter has a heart,” she teased as she took another forkful of their shared omelet. “A soft and squishy heart, all warm and cuddly.”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Eliot said. “I have a reputation on the line.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” she said. “I hate to think what the world would be like without a kid friendly amateur chef out there to pound the snot out of everyone who gets in his way.”

“Since it’s my life in question, I hope we never find out,” Eliot said.

“Amen,” Genevieve said. “Listen. If, hypothetically speaking, we ever felt like meeting up and having some fun together in the future, what would be the best way to get in touch?”

“Classified ads in the LA Times,” Eliot said. “It’s a system a friend came up with. Pick a book or an author that fits you, and reference it in a lost and found ad with whatever message you want to pass me. I’m not in the States enough to have a reliable cell phone, so calling’s out of the question. I do check the classifieds online when I can.” He did have a cell phone, and he paid through the nose for global coverage, but that was for work, not for hooking up with an attractive girl.

“Classified ads? It sounds like something out of a spy movie,” Genevieve said.

“Yeah, well. My friend loves those. Throw in something about T.S. Eliot’s poems if you want to make sure I see it.” Eliot could almost feel the spot on the back of his skull where the book of poetry had connected with his head when Gail had thrown it at him seven years back.

“I’ll do that,” Genevieve said. She took the empty plate from Eliot’s hands and set it on the floor. “Ready for tonight?”

“Hell yes,” Eliot said. The forgery of ‘Crucifixion with a Donor’ was in his bag, ready to be swapped out for the genuine article later that evening. “More than ready.”

“Same here.” She tugged on Eliot’s arm, pulling him over to lie down with her. “One more for the road?”

“I like the sound of that,” Eliot said, and caught her laughing mouth in a kiss.

One for the road. It was a good note to end their fling on. God only knew when the next time he’d have this sort of break from his life again.

* * *

June 19, 2005  
Valencia, Spain

Eliot finished his mid-morning snack of hot, creamy coffee and the richest pastry the café had on offer and set his dishes aside, wiping the oily, sugary residue from his fingers onto his too-loose jeans. Once he deemed his hands clean enough, he took an empty chair in front of one of the internet café’s computers and opened up a fresh browser window.

Spain wasn’t nearly far enough away from North Korea, but no one was out for his blood here, and he needed a place to rest up and regain some of the weight he’d lost those two months he’d been held prisoner. Damn Gutman to hell and back for leaving out that little detail. He never wanted to so much as hear about the monkey again for as long as he lived. He had about twenty pounds to regain, and that gash across the back of his calf wouldn’t be healed up for another few weeks. The only thing that didn’t bother him was his hair. The extra inch suited him. He figured he’d let it grow out a bit longer, just to see how it looked. Besides, it would cover up that shiny new scar at the base of his skull. Sometimes his job sucked, and sometimes, well, sometimes it sucked even more.

He needed to replace his phone as soon as he got back to the US. His old one had gotten lost somewhere between getting knocked unconscious and waking up in chains in a filthy cell. He couldn’t afford to lose clients due to them not being able to contact him. He’d already missed out on two months’ worth of work. In the meantime, he had other things to take care of: getting back to his former weight, and checking the LA Times website’s classifieds section.

He pulled up the site and opened it up to the proper page. Lost and Found. Lost bike, found dog, lost necklace, found luggage, lost, lost, found, lost, found, found…

“Found: Sequel to ‘Paper Moon’. ‘Addie Pray and the Hollow Men.’ Inquire at Omni Hotel by June 21.”

Eliot stopped, reread it, stared, and read it a third time. “Sequel to ‘Paper Moon’,” he muttered to himself. “Sequel. And ‘The Hollow Men.’ Seq – Oh, _fuck_ no.”

He cleared the browser history and limped from the internet café as quickly as his bum leg could take him. He had a plane to catch.

The first thing Eliot did when he got out of the tin can and into the LAX terminal was find a payphone and call Gail. “I’m Stateside,” he said the second she answered. “Still got my keys?”

“Yeah, take a taxi here and crash for the night,” Gail said. “By the way, I saw the ad. You owe me two grand for all the baby crap I bought you.”

“It’ll have to wait. I just blew another two thousand on a last minute flight in from Spain. And who says I’m taking in the kid?”

“You don’t have to say it,” she said. “You’re going to do it. I know you. She wouldn’t have posted that ad if she wanted to keep the baby.”

“I can’t be a dad!” He told himself that that was most definitely not a note of panic in his voice. “You just said it, you know me. I _can’t be a dad_.”

“Sure you can,” she said briskly. “You’ll be a great dad. Just take jobs that won’t make you leave the country for a while, and leave the kid with me when you’re off on one. It’ll be fine.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Eliot said.

“I know, and I get it, but come on, El. There was no good choice there. You don’t get to keep doing this. You’re going to have someone totally dependent on you very, very soon, and that baby’s needs rate way higher than your guilt complex.” On the other end of the line, she sighed and said, “El. Hang up, get a taxi, come to my place, and sleep. Your freak out can wait until tomorrow.”

“You’re the boss,” he said. “I’ll be there soon.”

“Good. Get going.”

“On my way.”

* * *

June 20, 2005  
Los Angeles, California

The first thing Genevieve said to Eliot when she opened her hotel room door was, “You look like crap. What the hell happened?”

“And you look pregnant,” Eliot said, eyeing her heavily rounded belly. “As for me, take some advice. If you want to go on vacation to Asia, I suggest you skip North Korea. It ain’t a very tourist friendly country. So. Baby’s mine?”

“I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else around that time,” she said. She grimaced and took a long, deep breath. “Yes. And it’s a girl. Are you going to take her?”

Her. A baby girl. He tried to remind himself why he’d come to tell her he couldn’t, but an image of his little sister as a toddler running around the yard shorted out that line of thought. A little girl. His little girl. “Why aren’t you keeping her?” Eliot asked.

“The only reason I didn’t get an abortion is because I convinced this rich idiot with an art collection to die for that he’d gotten me pregnant. I spent the last several months getting my every whim catered to,” Genevieve said. “I’m not mom material. I turn twenty five next month. I’m going to keep traveling and conning and having the time of my life. Diapers and bottles aren’t in my future. You’re good with children. You actually like them. It’s either you or social services. Take your pick.”

“You do remember what I do for a living, right?” Eliot said. “Do you have any idea what the average life expectancy is for someone like me? It’s not very long. There’s a bounty on my head in two different countries. I just spent the last two months in a prison in North Korea. Does that sound like father material to you?”

“There’s always social services,” Genevieve said.

Eliot shook his head. “No. No way. I refuse to bring a kid into this world unwanted. I can’t do that.”

“Then you’re just going to have to pick your jobs more carefully from now on,” Genevieve said. She winced, her hand flying to her belly as she took another deep breath. “Congrats. You’re a dad. Tell me you brought a car when you came.”

“I – yeah,” Eliot said, thrown by the non sequitur. “Why?”

“Because you’re driving me to the hospital,” she said. “I’m having contractions, you have wheels. Let’s go.”

“By all means,” Eliot said. He put a careful arm around her waist as they left her room and walked down the hall to the elevators. He had a feeling that once he was allowed to take their baby home, he wouldn’t set eyes on Genevieve again. But then, it wasn’t like they were supposed to be more to each other than a good memory of a couple weeks in Brussels.

A kid was a hell of a souvenir.

He managed to avoid laughing semi-hysterically by asking Genevieve, “Do you have any names picked out?”

“I was thinking Cassandra,” she said. “It’s my favorite identity. Bilingual grad student who loves photography. I have lots of fun with that one.”

“Not sure I’m thrilled to name my daughter after a criminal alias,” Eliot said, “But it’s a pretty name. Cassandra. Hmm. Mind if I use Irene for her middle name? It’s my mom’s name.”

“Why would I mind?” Genevieve asked, pressing the down button beside the elevator doors. “This is your kid. I will say that I like the sound of it, though.”

“Cassandra Irene Spencer,” Eliot said, trying out the name. “Yeah. I like it.”

There were so many reasons he should say no, so many arguments left to make as to why he wasn’t fit to look after a houseplant, let alone an infant. But as they stepped into the elevator together, one thought overrode them all. _Cassandra Irene Spencer. Welcome to the world, baby girl._


End file.
